Speakin Raises Pre-Series A Round, Welcomes Top Tech Doyen as Investor

SpeakIn, Asia's largest digital platform for 1:1 coaching and group learning sessions, has announced a fresh infusion of capital to accelerate its SaaS platform and global expansion. The company recently moved its headquarters to Singapore to effectively address the increasing demand for professional learning in the Asia Pacific region. Having grown 5x YoY in revenues, the company aims is the preferred choice for 1:1 coaching and group learning sessions for professionals and businesses across APAC. Its new investors include Kulmeet Bawa, President and Managing Director, SAP Indian subcontinent.

Deepshikha Kumar, the Founder and CEO of SpeakIn, described the fresh investment as another milestone in the company’s product growth story. “Kulmeet is one of the most respected names in technology leadership in APAC. This comes at a time when we are taking giant steps towards expanding SpeakIn in APAC, having moved our operations to Singapore, and the launch of GROW - our mobile SaaS platform.”

Deepshikha Kumar, the Founder and CEO of SpeakIn

“I am excited to be a part of the SpeakIn journey as they build the learning and development ecosystem across Asia and beyond. Having been coached and now coaching and mentoring the next of leaders, I understand how this can be a game changer both on the professional and personal front. SpeakIn is a clear leader in this space helping address the larger global learning need. Whether it is their web plat form or the intuitive mobile application, the ability to provide 1:1 coaching and 1-to-many sessions with the world’s best leaders, is truly impressive.”

Kulmeet joins SpeakIn investors including Vinod K. Dasari, former Managing Director of Ashok Leyland; Aditya Ghosh, Co-Founder of Akasa Air and former President of Indigo Airlines; Richard Rekhy, former CEO of KPMG India; and Aarti Gupta, one of India’s top women investors and the FICCI FLO Chairperson for Startups.

SpeakIn’s mission is to transform the landscape of executive education and professional learning by connecting the world’s best coaches and mentors with learners. The company boasts a network of over 18,000 experts and thought leaders who provide 1-on-1coaching and 1-to-many group learning sessions to enterprise clients, their leaders and their teams. Already established in the Indian sub-continent SpeakIn’s strategy is to expand across the Asia Pacific region becoming the go-to digital professional learning and coaching platform.

“We have seen strong growth over the last year and we are poised to make the transition from a service-based model to asubscription-based model, available on mobile and web platform,” said Kumar. “SpeakIn now offers professional learning via our SaaS platform SpeakIn GROWTM to enterprise clients who wish to develop their leaders and teams. Now everyone will be able to learn 1:1 from the best of leaders and practitioners.”

The company has are presentation of experts from 47 countries. With this new infusion of capital, the company is targeting expansion to North America in the next 12 months and to build a deeper engagement with 400+ enterprise existing clients across APAC.

About SpeakIn

Headquartered in Singapore, SpeakIn delivers learning on over 500 topics taught by over 18,000 global experts. Over 400 enterprise clients and 1.5 million professional learners across eight countries have learnt on the SpeakIn platform through 1-on-1 coaching, group speaker sessions and self-paced videos, blogs and podcasts - all delivered by SpeakIn experts. With marquee clients like Accenture, SAP, Shell, VISA, Omron, BCG and more, SpeakIn is scaling quickly backed by a deep-tech SaaS mobile and web platform. SpeakIn is led by a pedigreed team of ISB and Wharton Alumni founders, run by woman leaders with years of leadership experience across education and consulting at McGraw Hill, Accenture and EY. The company continues to build intuitive learning technologies to improve the professional learning experience, expand internationally and strengthen the brand across Asia Pacific and beyond.

Asia Dialogues Forum says Diversity and Inclusion must be connected to eventual business outcomes

The SpeakIn forum celebrated the full spectrum of human differences to create a culture of belonging and thereby making organisations complete and successful

Experts shared their opinion and views how workplaces and the world in general can be made more inclusive

SpeakIn, Asia’s first and largest network of thought leaders, has launched 'Asia Dialogues’ with a Diversity and Inclusion event.

Asia Dialogues is a forum that intends to build conversations on topics of urgent and immediate focus for the Asian region by bringing people together for progressive discussions on issues important for Asian businesses, governments, media and academia.


Later in the year, ‘Asia Dialogues’ will gather thought leaders and experts from across countries to engage on topics like Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), Sustainable Finance, Digital Transformation and Climate Change, among others.

The Diversity and Inclusion event was organised by SpeakIn in partnership with HDFC ERGO’s Sharing Circles, which is the general insurance company’s sustainable initiative aimed at true inclusivity. It had a keynote address by Sunam Sarkar, Executive Director, President and Chief, Business Officer, Apollo Tyres. The Panel Discussion that followed featured industry thought leaders that included Renee Tan, Business Transformational Leader, MD, HashTaqs; Alexander Krasavin, Chief Commercial Officer, Human Capital Solutions, APAC at Aon; Sudakshina Bhattacharya, Chief Human Resources Officer, HDFC ERGO General Insurance; Arvinder Gujral, Former Managing Director (South-East Asia) of Twitter; Anthea Collier, Managing Director (APAC) Randstad; and Michael Brown, award-winning author and entrepreneur based in UK.

Deepshikha Kumar, Founder and CEO, SpeakIn, moderated the discussion. The themes covered by the speakers included cognitive diversity, cognitive bias, and creating a safe and secure environment for people to thrive at the workplace. The panel underlined how organisations can grow to their full potential when there is equality and zero bias.

The event recognised top 10 diversity and inclusion champions from the Asian region for their outstanding contribution in furthering the D&I cause. They included Sophie Guerin, Alisha Fernando, Preeti D’mello, Duncan Hewett, Lynette Pathy, Nandini Sarkar, Bianca Stringuini, Kaveree Bamzai, Daniel Clarke, Angel Kilian.

Commenting on the first edition of Asia Dialogues, Deepshikha Kumar, Founder and CEO of SpeakIn said, “We have always been at the forefront of dialogues on matters that can not only initiate the change but drive the business, social and policy ecosystem overall. The intent behind Asia Dialogues is to bring forth much-needed discussions on a wide array of topics that can impact the world’s largest continent that Asia is.”

Speaking of the event, she said: “It was a day full of learning, and rich perspectives on D&I. Our expert speakers not only stressed the need for cognitive diversity but shared how it needs to be included from the very beginning of employee experience. We look forward to having more such conversations in the near future and hope Asia Dialogues will be the most meaningful platform for it.”

Delivering the keynote address, Sunam Sarkar, Executive Director, President and Chief, Business Officer, Apollo Tyres, said, “For the full potential of D&I to be unleashed many myths about it need to be busted, among them the notion that it means lowering the bar and that’s a barrier we must get rid of.” Diversity, he said, is like being invited to the party and inclusion is being asked to dance.

Taking part in the panel discussion, Arvinder Gujral, Former Managing Director (South-East Asia) of Twitter said, if organisations cannot connect diversity and inclusion to eventual business outcomes, D&I remains an amorphous concept. “While we try to remove long years of unconscious bias and accept D&I,” Mr. Gujral said, “it is time to to look beyond diversity only in terms of colour and creed, we need to embrace diversity of opinions in the objectives and key results of our organisations. That’s real diversity and inclusion.”

About SpeakIn:

SpeakIn is Asia's largest B2B SaaS edtech platform powered by over 18000 expert speakers and coaches. The learning is delivered through customised one-on-one coaching, e-learning videos, blogs, podcasts and live interactive sessions covering more than 500 topics in multiple languages. SpeakIn serves over 350 clients across businesses, associations and academic institutions in eight countries.