How to Win Southeast Asia: The Founder’s Playbook Featuring Jianfeng Lu - Founder & CEO of Wiz.ai
Getting into Southeast Asia is one thing. Winning customers and scaling across it is another.
Different languages, business cultures and buying habits mean a strategy that works in Singapore may need a rethink in Indonesia, Thailand or Vietnam. How do you choose your first market, build local trust and turn early traction into a regional business?
Join Jianfeng Lu, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based WIZ.AI, for a practical conversation on building and growing in Southeast Asia. WIZ.AI is a leading voice AI company in Southeast Asia with over 300 enterprise customers across 17 countries, with Fortune 500 companies and unicorn startups accounting for 60% of its customer base.
Drawing on Jianfeng's experience bringing conversational AI to enterprises across the region, we will explore the decisions, trade-offs and lessons behind regional expansion.
We’ll also discuss:
Where to start: Choosing your first market and knowing when to expand.
What to localize: Going beyond translation to adapt your product, pricing and sales approach.
How to win customers: Building trust, navigating enterprise sales and choosing local partners.
Who to hire: Building local teams while keeping the business aligned.
What to avoid: Common expansion mistakes that cost founders time and money.
Whether you’re exploring your first Southeast Asian market or expanding beyond one country, join us for a candid discussion on what it takes to build a business that wins across the region.
Think regionally. Earn trust locally.
Meet Jianfeng Lu - Founder & CEO of WIZ.AI
Jianfeng Lu is a serial entrepreneur, investor and co-founder and chairman of WIZ.AI, a leading voice AI company in Southeast Asia. Founded in Singapore in 2019, WIZ.AI helps enterprises engage customers through AI-powered conversations tailored to local languages, accents and market needs.
The company serves more than 300 clients across 17 countries, with Fortune 500 companies and unicorn startups accounting for 60% of its customer base. Its platform handles more than one million automated customer interactions per hour, helping businesses improve customer experience and operational efficiency.
Before founding WIZ.AI, Jianfeng led China R&D at Trend Micro and served as vice president at Qihoo 360. An active angel investor across China, the United States and Southeast Asia, he has backed more than 10 enterprise technology and AI startups, including three unicorns. He brings firsthand experience in building local teams, winning enterprise customers and scaling technology businesses across diverse markets.
This event is proudly presented by:
FoundersHK is a nonprofit organization with the mission to build Hong Kong as the next tech hub of the world.
FoundersHK is a global community of entrepreneurs, technology leaders and investors passionate about propelling the next generation of Hong Kong founders to scale and thrive in all parts of the world. FoundersHK is an entryway for Hong Kong founders to Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. We put the right people together, to help Hong Kong founders become an integral contributor to the global community of tech innovation leadership.
FoundersHK is a community where we skip the bullshit, get right to work, and deliver results. For that is the essence of the true Hong Kong spirit.