Meet select team members

• Mario Aquino

  Mario has 20 years of investment, business building and entrepreneurial experience in big data and advanced analytics. He brings a wealth of experience in digital innovation, fintech, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. As FutureLabs Ventures' Managing Partner, he leverages his expertise to build scalable, next generation digital ventures and tech investments.

  Prior to FutureLabs, Mario was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he founded McKinsey Solutions and McKinsey New Ventures in Asia-Pacific. While leading McKinsey New Ventures, Mario invested, built and scaled a portfolio of 20+ fintech, consumertech, healthtech, and energytech start-ups that have become global players in their fields. During his tenure, he also spearheaded the growth of McKinsey New Ventures' team to over 500 professionals in Asia-Pacific.

  Mario was also the Managing Director and board member of risk analytics firm Moody's Analytics in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; where he was instrumental in making a number of transformative acquisitions and internal investments within financial technology and advanced analytics. During his nine years stint at Moody's Analytics, the firm grew into a US$1 billion revenue company.

  Previously, Mario was a financial analyst at Lehman Brothers in London, focusing on high-tech and high-growth sectors.

  Mario obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration in International Business and Finance at Milan's Bocconi University summa cum laude, before obtaining his MBA at University of Chicago Booth, Graduate School of Business in 1999.

  

  Mario Managing Partner

• Joachim Vandaele

  Joachim possesses over 15 years of experience within financial services, technology, innovation and family offices. In his current role at FutureLabs Ventures, Joachim guides startups, alongside providing innovative ideas and strategic direction to ventures that can foster large scale impact. He also advises on the smart allocation of resources in cash crunch situations, in addition to identifying and integrating new companies.

  He is also currently the Managing Partner and co-founder of Zephyr Ventures. The firm acts as an investor, advisor, shareholder and director to a number of companies across various sectors. All of Joachim’s entrepreneurial and equity ventures sit within this company.

  Previously, Joachim was the Managing Director of Found8. The company provides a network of innovation studios comprising coworking spaces and collaborative communities that enable entrepreneurs and innovators to work on advancing ideas and fostering change.

  Joachim also served as the CEO at the Trusted Family Office for five years. Trusted Family is a secure private technology platform used by the world's most respected high net worth family businesses and family offices. Within this role, he built an international presence and ran offices in three regions. He continues to be a board member of Trusted Family Office.

  Additionally, Joachim was Partner and Country Director at Finalyse, a leading consultancy in valuation and risk management. He led the firm’s international expansion strategy, defined and executed the general investment plans, redesigned organisational models as well as ran international awareness and change management programmes. In 2019, he became a lecturer at INSEAD, one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools. He teaches an MBA course and serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence; helping students create new ventures and advising those actively working in ventures with insightful feedback.

  Joachim holds a Master in Economic and Investment Sciences from Odisee, a Master in Banking and Finances from Ghent University, as well as an MBA in Entrepreneurship from INSEAD.

  

  Joachim Founding Partner

• Vai Soman

  Vai comes with over 17 years of experience in both startups and the corporate sector across several countries. As the HR & Talent Acquisition lead at FutureLabs Ventures, she focuses on creating and strengthening relationships within the organisation and recruiting & developing the right talent to grow our presence in the region.

  Before FutureLabs Ventures, Vai was a recruitment specialist at Hays in Singapore where she recruited talent within the financial services sector. Her special focus was the fintech and startup space and allowed her to develop an extensive network of entrepreneurial and specialist talent. Prior to that Vai founded and built her own business in the arts space.

  Vai started her career in marketing in a software solutions business India and then moved to the UK & Greece, developing her skills and experience in brand, PR, media relations, content & digital marketing mainly in the financial services sector. Due to an avid interest in Human Resources she simultaneously developed her experience in managing teams and talent and finally decided to follow her passion, switching careers when she reached Singapore and hasn’t looked back since.

  Vai considers herself to be a citizen of the world. Having lived in 4 countries she encourages open communication and strongly believes in encouraging people to think deeply and critically.

  Vai holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Warwick, UK and a Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing & Human Resource Management from IMDR, India.

  

  Vai Head HR & Recruiting

• Tamanna Dahiya

  A highly motivated innovation and change leader, Tamanna possesses over 15 years of experience in innovation, strategy and talent management with corporates and start-ups. As the Venture Director at FutureLabs Ventures, she provides hands-on experience and coaching in building corporate ventures and startups, effectively bridging the best of both worlds together.

  Before FutureLabs Ventures, Tamanna was the Director of DHL’s Asia Pacific Innovation Center. There, she was instrumental in setting up the Innovation Center platform and defining its customer-centric innovation approach. She led customer engagements and trends research projects on topics of relevance to future of logistics including robotics, augmented reality, omni-channel and blockchain with close collaboration of business units and start-up partners. Over a period of three years, this center engaged with more than two hundred customers from across industries on innovation relevant to their business operations.

  Growing up representing her state in five different sports, Tamanna instinctively relates to the game-changing potential of high performing teams. She started her career with a talent management start-up in India that got acquired by Manpower Inc. She then moved on to join a Fortune 500 company where she was involved in different areas ranging from internal consulting on operations and strategy to new product development. Among other things, she developed and launched a new global product focused on warehousing services that has since grown into one of the most profitable products for the business world-wide. She has lived and worked in the United States, Europe and Asia and is well-versed with the innovation ecosystems and work-cultures across these continents.

  Tamanna holds an MBA from Emory University, Atlanta and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Human Relations from the Management Development Institute in Gurgaon, India.

  

  Tamanna Venture Director

• Simas Ceckauskas

  Equipped with years of experience in management consulting and the start-up world, Simas has served as an advisor to large enterprises and has established a track record of scaling start-ups. As a Venture Associate at FutureLabs Ventures, Simas is dedicated to helping start-ups transform into established companies.

  Prior to FutureLabs, Simas served as an advisor to major corporates, scaled start-ups and founded and sold his own company. He has experienced both the corporate and the start-up world and today finds himself most effective somewhere in the middle, at the juncture of where entrepreneurial talent and vigour meet the structure and scale of an established corporate powerhouse. Simas has spent the better part of his career trying to arrange these “shotgun weddings” to build new companies and subsequently acting as the marriage counselor to see them blossom.

  With citizenship in the United States, European Union, and Australia, and having lived in seven countries, Simas views himself as a global citizen. He has a deep appreciation for the perspectives that different cultures bring and looks for the best ideas globally to build new ventures.

  Outside of his career, Simas is an avid student of philosophy and finds deep relaxation in the readings of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Lao Tzu and their teachings applicable to his daily work. He encourages corporates and entrepreneurs to see that “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”.

  Simas holds an MBA from INSEAD, a Master in Finance from ESADE and a Master in International Management from the CEMS Global Graduate School Alliance.

  

  Simas Venture Associate

• Giuseppe Manai

  Giuseppe has over fifteen years of experience and is skilled in executing big data strategies in start-ups, governments and corporations. As a Venture Founder at FutureLabs Ventures, he is driven by a passion to create businesses underpinned by social values, which he does by seeking the confluence between science and products.

  He is also one of the co-founders of the ACM SIGKDD chapter in Singapore. A strong advocate in providing professional advice to tech teams who are driven to excel, Giuseppe focuses on building products that leverage techniques such as optimisation, time series analysis and forecasting, trajectory data mining, anomaly detection, network analytics, collaborative filtering, supervised and unsupervised learning, nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory and numerical simulations.

  Prior to joining FutureLabs, Giuseppe was the Data Science and Product Director at Dataspark, a spin-off of Singaporean telco firm Singtel that focuses on mobility intelligence and other telco products. He also worked at various data science roles at organisations such as SAS and the Irish Revenue Authority.

  Giuseppe holds a PhD in Physics from Trinity College Dublin. There, he specialised in experimental and numerical studies in nanotechnology and material science, working on low temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy.

  

  Giuseppe Venture Founder

• Stan Zabolotsky

  Stan has over 10 years of experience across multiple industries and geographies, mostly focused on launching and growing businesses of various sizes, organically (accounting, management, strategy) and inorganically (M&A, JV, and fundraising).

  As a Venture Founder at Futurelabs Ventures, Stan primarily focuses on building ventures, but also on various other areas such as researching and identifying lucrative value spaces to match with our corporate partners’ capabilities, creating frameworks around our various analytical approaches, and scouting start-ups, scale-ups and corporates that we could potentially partner with.

  Stan’s professional experience includes managing and growing an 8-figure energy distribution business for Siemens in Canada as Financial Controller, working on cross-border 9-figure corporate acquisitions in New York as an Investment Banking Associate, building and managing the business intelligence unit at an online shopping platform as VP of BI and Finance, and spearheading a corporate turnaround of a public Malaysian manufacturing company as CFO and later COO.

  In parallel to his professional career path, Stan has always had an affinity for entrepreneurship. From starting a luxury-home window-cleaning service at 18, to co-founding multiple businesses including online statistics tutoring platform, liquor delivery app, and most recently a social enterprise working with the government and the largest corporates in Malaysia to sustainably support children’s education.

  Stan holds a Bachelor of Commerce and an MBA from the University of Toronto, as well as an accounting designation.

  

  Stan Venture Founder