By curating networking and mentorship opportunities, IMDA’s Singapore Digital Leadership Accelerator is creating a pipeline of talent ready to take on regional and global roles.
BY THE end of a single morning at the 2025 ATxSummit, the apex event of Asia Tech x Singapore, Allan Teng had unlocked doors his usual business channels rarely could.
The Workato founder and senior advisor for Asia-Pacific and Japan – who is also vice-president and general manager of the cloud platform’s Japan office – found himself in direct dialogue with ministers, global chief technology officers, artificial intelligence (AI) researchers and senior tech executives from around the world.
“I met India’s minister of state for electronics and information technology, the Rwandan minister of infocomm technology and innovation, and Indonesia’s vice minister of creative economy,” says Teng.
“The industry speakers and participants were also very senior leaders, giving me opportunities to build meaningful connections I may not necessarily make in my day-to-day life.”
As an SG Digital Leader under the Singapore Digital Leadership Accelerator (SGDLA), Teng enjoys access to platforms such as the ATxSummit.
Launched in 2022 by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the SGDLA has grown into a community of 1,500 digital leaders, comprising corporate executives, product innovators and start-up founders.
Its aim is to build a pipeline of Singaporean leaders who can drive digital transformations at scale, both regionally and globally.
“The SGDLA connects us with people to help us accelerate our business and gives us access to people we wouldn’t otherwise have,” Teng says.
Having that access is important for leaders.
“As leaders, we need to bridge the gap between what we know and what we do not know because we must be able to see five, ten years ahead of everybody else,” he says. “Otherwise, how are we to steer the ship?”
Turning regional expansion into a playbook
When tech firms expand across Asia, the hard part is rarely the first hire or the first customer.
It is building a regional set-up that can recruit, develop and manage talent across markets without slowing down. Founder of cloud platform Workato, Allan Teng, has done that from Singapore.
Now senior adviser for Asia-Pacific and Japan, and vice-president and general manager of Workato’s Japan office, Teng helped build the company’s regional operations – including expanding its Japan footprint from Tokyo to Fukuoka.
Over nine years, he has grown the team to more than 120 people across five countries. That work is backed by a broad operator’s lens.
(From left) Teng pictured with Iwasaki Osamu, consumer products provider Lixil’s senior vice president, digital, and leader of infrastructure, global operations, and Hiro Suzuki, Workato Japan’s founder and field chief technology officer, at the AWS Summit held in Tokyo, Japan in 2025. Photo: Workato
With a 15-year background spanning business development, operations, product design and software development, Teng moves between growth and execution – the mix needed to scale teams and keep delivery tight across very different markets.
What stands out is the discipline behind the expansion. Rather than treating growth as a series of one-off market plays, Teng built a repeatable playbook – hiring, developing leaders and setting up operating rhythms that work across different markets.
Under his watch, Workato’s local set-up evolved from an entry point into a strategic regional headquarters – building capabilities, developing leaders and running operations that support expansion across Asia.
His reach also extends beyond the region. Teng is a founding board director of the newly established Singapore Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and a council leader with the US-Japan Council. This year, he will also begin a Harvard Business School executive programme.
Together, these touchpoints place him within international business networks that complement his work on the ground – and broaden the connections he can bring back into Singapore’s leadership ecosystem.
Cultivating leadership talent
Teng’s entrepreneurial journey began early.
At 16, he started a social enterprise, and an events management platform a few years later after realising limitations when managing large-scale races – an insight he gained while organising the Jurong Lake Run.
He founded the event in 2010. It was the largest charity run in western Singapore for several years.
In 2014, while pursuing a business administration degree from the National University of Singapore, through the Overseas College-Silicon Valley programme, he joined Workato as a founding team member responsible for business development.
Since then, he has helped build the company’s footprint across Asia-Pacific, from Singapore to the Philippines, Australia and Japan, and now shuttles between Singapore and Japan.
Today, Workato employs hundreds in Singapore and is a recognised player in enterprise automation and AI integration.
Teng says the SGDLA is valuable not only for his professional growth but for strengthening Singapore’s digital ecosystem.
“What is most interesting about the SGDLA is that it is building a community of digital leaders who are able to support one another,” says Teng.
Through the network, Teng was paired with two senior leaders as mentors: Allen Shim, board director and audit committee chair at financial super app Toss, and David Florijn, Singapore-based group chief information officer of Japanese manufacturing company Hoya.
He met them on separate occasions in Singapore in 2024, with conversations spanning Japanese business culture and local market challenges, as well as industry shifts and leadership blind spots.
“A lot of times I’m asking them what they see changing in the industry that I’m not aware about, and this has helped me broaden my knowledge,” he says.
The peer-to-peer coaching extended beyond operational leadership. Florijn, he says, helped him see things differently.
“He helped me see it’s not all about work, to think about my passions, and he got me thinking about mentoring others,” says Teng.
In 2025, Teng began mentoring two Singaporean young talents within the SGDLA network.
He says: “With my mentees, we talk a lot about the fundamentals – how to start a company, build the right team, evaluate start-ups before joining one, and how to approach fundraising.”
The SGDLA also co-funds opportunities for SG Digital Leaders to deepen their professional capabilities.
This month, Teng will begin a 12-week hybrid Harvard Business School (Advanced Management Programme) designed for senior executives.
For him, the SGDLA is broadening local leaders’ horizons across industries and markets.
“The main thing for me when I think about this is that there are talents we can tap on for the future,” he says.
“What is essential for any digital leader is to think bigger to make an impact regionally and globally.”
Footnote
This article was first published on The Business Times.
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