SINGAPORE — Aboitiz Data Innovation (ADI), the corporate vehicle in the transformation of Philippines’ leading conglomerate Aboitiz Group, forged three critical agreements with global technology players to signal its strong pivot into a complete “techglomerate”.
Signed at the ADI: Let’s Press Start event on Thursday, Oct. 27, at the ArtScience Museum here were three memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with the National University of Singapore (NUS), Synfindo, and JERA. CEO Dr. David Hardoon signed the agreements for ADI.
In the MOU with JERA, both parties agree to jointly explore data science and AI solutions for the energy and power sector, leveraging their respective experience and capabilities.
JERA is an energy company with global reach that has strength in the entire energy supply chain, from participation in LNG upstream projects and fuel procurement, through fuel transportation to power generation.
Under the MoU, the parties will consider various joint development opportunities and explore potential areas for further validation and adoption of these applications. Together, the two parties expect to unlock new value through the usage of algorithms and data models applied effectively to address power generation challenges.
“The environment today, particularly that across Southeast Asia, highlights the importance of attaining and maintaining power generation reliability, efficiency, and environmental sustainability. ADI is investing to develop new and improved ways to address these challenges in the Power Industry. The MoU with JERA provides a unique opportunity to collaborate with a world-class operator to further drive innovative AI initiatives, enhance the impact and validate the feasibility of solutions in real-world settings,” said Hardoon.
“As JERA is committed to providing cutting-edge solutions to the world’s energy issues, we believe this MoU offers an opportunity to work closely together with our ADI colleagues for developing meaningful data science applications for the energy sector. Through this collaboration, JERA can leverage its experience across the energy value chain and digital capabilities to develop new and enhanced solutions that deliver value to power generation operations,” said Dr. Sami Ben Jamaa, Global Chief Information and Digital Officer, JERA.
Established in 2015, JERA is an equal joint venture of two major Japanese electric companies, TEPCO Fuel & Power Incorporated and Chubu Electric Power Company. JERA’s mission is to provide cutting edge solutions to the world’s energy issues, by offering energy supply models established in Japan through JERA’s global operations to other countries.
JERA has also recently established its New Corporate Vision for 2035, indicating its goal “To scale up its clean energy platform of renewables and low greenhouse gas thermal power, sparking sustainable development in Asia and around the world”.
The MOU with the National University of Singapore College of Design and Engineering (NUS CDE) seeks to facilitate further research and development activities in the areas of AI-enabled Sustainable Systems.
ADI was represented by its CEO Hardoon while Professor Aaron Thean represented NUS as the Dean of College of Design and Engineering. The signing was witnessed by Tan Kong Hwee, Executive Vice President from the Singapore Economic Development Board.
Together with NUS, a top institution in Singapore, ADI plans to develop even more AI use cases in the built environment, urban design, power utilities provision, manufacturing, and finance sectors throughout Singapore and the region.
The joint collaboration between ADI and National University of Singapore aims to encourage more research and develop activities in AI-enabled sustainable systems, to help develop strong use cases in areas such as urban design, power utilities, manufacturing, and finance sectors.
“We believe that the work we do at ADI demonstrates how we can serve the public interest
through data science. We have seen the positive impacts DSAI brings to ESG goals. Working with partners like the NUS College of Design and Engineering, empowers us with the skills and knowledge to achieve growth across sectors benefiting Singapore and the global economy,” said Hardoon.
With NUS CDE’s expertise and focus on developing new machine learning tools and applying them to explore new functionalities, it is well-positioned to advance the discovery of progressive AI solutions.
“We are excited to embark on this journey of research collaboration with ADI to develop data-driven and AI-enabled technologies towards sustainable and resilient growth for Singapore and the region. Through such partnerships, our College brings together its expertise in multiple engineering and design disciplines such as AI, machine learning, and data analytics to tackle real-world challenges faced by local and regional communities. We see great value in working with partners like ADI to co-create sustainable data innovations,” Said Professor Aaron Thean, Dean of NUS CDE.
The partnership is expected to bring many new possibilities to the region’s AI scene and also aims to pave the way for other industries to follow by leveraging more sustainable AI systems.
With Synfindo, both parties aim to jointly explore the use of the secure Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) environment so as to interact with data securely and seamlessly for the purpose of Data Model creation or Proof of Concept (POC).
Synfindo was represented by their Chief Executive Officer Umang Moondra. The MOU signing was witnessed by Pradyumna Agrawal, Managing Director, Temasek whose operating entity, LemmaTree, is an investor in Synfindo.
Synfindo is a fintech start-up that is committed to building innovative products and enabling growth for the financial services industry across the globe by accelerating collaboration opportunities between financial institutions and fintech companies.
Moondra said, “We are delighted to partner with ADI to transform the banking and financial sector by introducing innovation and digitalization. Our current efforts in driving data innovation on a larger scale and in an expedient manner are aligned with ADI’s ambitions for Parlay.”
Parlay, ADI’s recently launched data exchange platform, is exploring options for collaboration with Synfindo’s product suite. Parlay is expected to reduce product development time by 40 percent, negating the need for financial institutions to engage in data transformation activities of synthetic datasets before embarking on a hackathon or similar innovation exercise with FinTechs. With this new partnership, ADI will drive the private adoption of Parlay to assist various financial services firms in accelerating their own digital transformation journeys.
“We are always looking for opportunities to collaborate with organizations to help them unlock the power of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) tools and solutions to optimize revenue, increase operational efficiency, and better manage risks. Through Parlay, you can easily and securely share and access valuable data across business units and industries to build high-value data products and DSAI solutions,” said Guy Sheppard, ADI Chief Operating Officer for Financial Services.
Launched in May this year, Parlay was created to address the common challenges businesses face with data sharing adoption – data kept in silos and complicated and lengthy legal procedures around the loss of control of data being shared. The platform allows businesses across industries, sectors, and borders to visualize new possibilities, explore data from other sectors, and experiment new data-driven approaches to solving business problems.
This collaboration will allow Synfindo and its customers to enjoy faster delivery for data modeling and data interactivity, helping them achieve their core goal of accelerating FinTech and RegTech innovation more efficiently.