NUS EMBA Student Profile
Ren Teng
Chinese EMBA Class 32 students
AI RUDDER,CEO
Overseas Entrepreneur Scholarship
First Prize Winner
In 2008, when most people were still worried about the uncertainty caused by the global economic crisis, Ren Teng saw an unprecedented opportunity. The advent of the iPhone and the release of Android revealed for him the great changes that smartphones were about to bring. It was in this context that a senior from Shanghai Jiao Tong University joined hands with him and decided to start a business together and develop a mobile phone app. Ren Teng, with his passion for technology, took on the development of the engine part, while the rest of the team focused on the design of the user interface. This is the origin of TouchPal.
The choice of input method as their first product was based on in-depth insight into the market. The touchscreen input method of smartphones, while it brings convenience to users, also introduces more typing errors. To solve this problem, the TouchPal team began to work on language models, hoping to provide users with a more intelligent input experience.
Despite the difficulties in the initial stage, such as shortage of funds and high competition in the market, Ren Teng and his team have gradually won the recognition of the market with their perseverance and continuous technological innovation. Their efforts finally paid off in 2019 when TouchPal received an Innovation Award from the GSMA and successfully attracted the attention of major companies such as Qualcomm and France Telecomm.
But success never satisfied Ren Teng. In the face of the rapid change of the mobile Internet, he realized that product and commercialization must be carried out simultaneously. Under his leadership, the TouchPal team began to explore how to ensure that all departments worked together to achieve maximum business value. This forward-thinking led to TouchPal being successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018.
Chinese EMBA
TouchPal's success is not only based on its excellent products, but also thanks to its close cooperation with many mobile phone manufacturers around the world. At its peak, TouchPal reached a staggering 600 million users, while other products also attracted tens of millions of daily active users.
Standing on the stage of the New York Stock Exchange, Ren Teng felt the fruits of his years of entrepreneurial efforts. This moment was not only an important milestone in the company's development, but also a peak in his personal career. The success of the listing has brought more opportunities and challenges to the company, and also brought a broader vision and greater responsibility to Ren Teng.
It was 2018, and the New York sun was shining through the windows of the New York Stock Exchange in the slightly cramped but historic hall. Although this hall is considered by many to be the center of the financial world, in reality, it is not as grand as one might think. But this does not affect its importance, every company that rings the bell here represents the memory of an era, a legend of business.
Ren Teng stood there, looking at the screen of the trading floor scrolling with their company's logo, and the sense of accomplishment was indescribable. When he came down from the second floor of the New York Stock Exchange, he saw the names of many business giants in that narrow corridor, and they all left their footprints here, and Ren Teng also left his name in it. But compared to these business giants, he felt his own insignificance.
Back home, he quoted Churchill's words after the Battle of El Alamein on social platforms: "This is not the end, nor the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end." This sentence is not only written for TouchPal, but also for himself. While TouchPal's journey has been around for 10 years, the real challenges and opportunities have just begun.
This moment of reflection made Ren Teng more determined to do so. He realized that his most valuable wealth was not material, but the time spent with his partners and the valuable experience accumulated during the period of mobile Internet dividends. He began to reflect on his next steps, which prompted him to choose to start his own business again, this time aiming for AI and the global market. He hopes to use his experience at TouchPal to provide better services to users around the world.
The choice of AI track is also closely related to his previous experience in the field of input methods and language models. Ren Teng mentioned,Although China has small speakers、The United States has Google speakers,But in other countries,The penetration rate of smart speakers is still very low,Mainly because of"Small languages"Insufficient support。 He didn't like the term because it had the arrogance of a great power. For example, Indonesia's official language, Bahasa Indonesia, has 300 million speakers, so why call it a "small language"?
He believes that the use of AI technology to process multiple languages is a promising direction. To further determine the direction of the market, Ren Teng and his team first traveled to Jakarta to explore the Indonesian market. He found that intelligent customer service is a widespread demand in the local area. Therefore, they decided to use AI technology to take over some simple and repetitive customer service work, not only replacing some human customer service, but also reorganizing and optimizing the entire customer service process.
They've been in this direction for four years, gradually expanding their business and adding the types of customer service they can replace. Their core value is to use AI to help the B-end and the C-end better communicate and connect. It all starts with the initial market research, goes through the processing of productization and programming, and finally forms a complete business cycle.
AI RUDDER, FOUNDED BY REN TENG, WAS ORIGINALLY AIMED AT THE INDONESIAN MARKET, BUT IN CHINA, SUCH PRODUCTS ARE NOT NEW. They have encountered challenges in the face of industrial structure differences between domestic and overseas. But that's why they chose to enter the Indonesian market first, a blue ocean market at the time. Although they have developed relatively smoothly in the Indonesian market, the impact of the pandemic has kept their focus on the Indonesian market.
▲ Indonesian team
In 2021, Ren Teng began to consider expanding to other countries and decided to move his headquarters from Shanghai to Singapore. Now, AI RUDDER's products have been applied in more than 20 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and have received a good market response.
Ren Teng shared with us the origin of the company's Chinese name, "Sai Duo Intelligence", and he mentioned the influence of "Mr. Sai" in the New Culture Movement and how to incorporate this idea into his company. "Sai" stands for science and AI, and "rudder" stands for going to sea. "When we were founded, I knew that our mission was to promote AI technology to go overseas and serve the world. ”
▲Shanghai team
His strategy is to first establish a solid foothold in the Indonesian market, and then work with multinational companies and Chinese companies to introduce products to more countries. At present, Ren Teng is also considering entering the U.S. market, because he always believes that the U.S. market has great potential in the context of the resurgence of AI technology.
Everyone has their own opinion and position on AI technology, based on their personal experience, background, and perspective. When we talk about the promise and risks of AI, the diversity of perspectives is like a starry stellarity. For some, they may be more conservative and worried about the potential risks posed by AI, while some entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future of AI. Ren Teng, from the perspective of his own company and the track, has a unique insight into this.
Chinese EMBA
He believes that the industrial structure of AI includes multiple dimensions such as the underlying GPU, the combination of software and hardware, large model research, and the application layer. Different dimensions and levels face different development opportunities and challenges. Ren Teng pointed out that AI technology is not only limited by modern large models. In the era of smaller models, AI has already shown its power in solving real-world problems.
But as the models grow in size, these large models are somewhat like a bulky elephant, and they may not be flexible enough for some tasks. Ren Teng metaphorically said that these large models need equipment like horse-drawn carriages to exert their power. Although large models like ChatGPT are powerful in some ways, they also have limitations and can hallucinate or provide inaccurate information.
For companies focusing on the application layer, how to translate these "elephants" into practical applications is a key challenge they need to face. Ren Teng believes that companies should not be limited to one mode of thinking, nor should they only start from technical pain points. Instead, companies need to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of the technology, while digging deep into the real needs of the market to find the best business model and build a truly valuable business closed loop.
Ren Teng said that the real challenge lies in how to perfectly combine AI technology with market demand to provide users with truly valuable services. This is a question that every AI practitioner should think deeply about.
NOW, HE FOUNDED AI RUDDER HAS BEEN USED IN MORE THAN 20 COUNTRIES AND HAS RECEIVED GOOD MARKET FEEDBACK. Ren Teng's global vision and firm determination have made him a true leader in the AI industry.
In this era of increasing globalization, Ren Teng has chosen a unique path. Indonesia, a vibrant land, became his first choice. There, he worked hard and achieved impressive results. Subsequently, he turned his attention to the multinational corporation (MNC) market in other countries. In recent years, as "going overseas to Southeast Asia" has become the focus of many domestic enterprises, Ren Teng also shared his valuable experience in expanding the global market, especially the Southeast Asian market.
He believes that the journey to sea is a sea of stars, full of infinite opportunities and challenges. In the process of going to sea, clear goal setting is key. In 2021, they set themselves an ambitious goal: to build a truly global company and adopt a global culture to manage their team. This means that they want to be able to adopt the management style of most Fortune 500 or MNC companies. But it wasn't all smooth sailing. If a startup directly imitates a multinational company, it can lead to a significant decrease in combat effectiveness. While they want to be able to recruit experienced employees, these employees may not be comfortable with the fast pace of a startup. This is a cultural challenge.
He is well aware that one of the significant advantages of Chinese companies in overseas markets is cost. They have distinct advantages, both in terms of technology and management efficiency. But that doesn't mean they can abandon that culture of struggle. This is the first pitfall they need to avoid.
▲ American team
Another challenge is team building. True "globalization" largely means "localization". A truly global company should be able to achieve a high degree of localization in each country. This means that they need to develop a strategy based on the realities of each market, rather than simply adopting a uniform strategy. This poses a challenge for founders' time management, as they need to find a balance between domestic and overseas markets, ensuring that each market receives adequate attention. It was a huge test of his time and energy.
Although he has achieved a certain reputation in the industry, Ren Teng always feels that his entrepreneurial journey is still a vast ocean, waiting for him to explore. Among the three major tasks of "finding people, finding money, and finding directions" in entrepreneurship, he is most handy at "finding money". Especially in the turbulent years of 2019 and 2020, the financing environment has become extremely severe under the haze of the epidemic. But with his determination, wisdom and perseverance, Ren Teng successfully raised funds for the company during the most difficult times, laying a solid foundation for the company's future development.
During the pandemic, the huge uncertainty in the market has impacted their "pay-as-you-go" model like never before. Just when everyone thought they would be hit hard, in 2021, he completed two rounds of financing. There's a little story about an investor he admires so much who once shared his predictions for 2022 that the funding environment will become more difficult. This prediction made Ren Teng feel deeply in crisis, and he decided to launch the next round of financing ahead of schedule, a decisive decision that won more development opportunities for the company.
When it comes to "finding direction", Ren Teng has his own unique opinion. He firmly believes that starting from a niche market and then gradually expanding it is a challenging but attractive path. Starting from customer service automation in Indonesia's financial industry, they gradually expanded into a larger market, and along the way, they encountered countless challenges, but also reaped countless successes.
At the end of 2021, Ren Teng made an important decision to come to the National University of Singapore to continue his studies.
There are three considerations behind this decision:
1
First of all, he aspires to learn Xi from deep human interaction, beyond the traditional Xi model of books and online courses. He admits that in the past few years, although he has invested more than 3,000 hours in the app, this one-way learning and Xi model still makes him feel inadequate, lacking real interpersonal interaction and critical thinking.
2
Secondly, since his company had set up its headquarters in Singapore, and considering the different pandemic policies of Singapore and China at the time, he wanted to find something more meaningful to do in Singapore.
3
In the end, the selection criteria of the National University of Singapore (NUS) were a perfect match for his values and aesthetics, and he considered it the best choice for him to be the best choice for him, without the need for cumbersome English exams and material preparation, and more on the background and wishes of the students.
At NUS, he got to know many outstanding seniors, such as Yuan Xingwei, Wang Xiaoyu, Wei Haijun, etc. He appreciates their business and charisma, and firmly believes that it is the best choice for him to be in the company of such a group.
In the first year of the NUS EMBA, Professor Fu Qiang was shocked when he first expounded the idea that macroeconomics may have lost its core values.
Mr. Fu bluntly said that the current macroeconomics textbooks are scarce to the point of being out of print, which seems to question some theories in the past. He couldn't help but wonder what mysteries would be revealed to him during the four-day course.
As the course deepened, Ren Teng gradually understood that what Mr. Fu said was true. Indeed, no theory can perfectly explain this rapidly changing world. In particular, some macroeconomic theories may be challenged when national policymakers do not base their thinking solely on a market economy. But this does not mean that all macroeconomic theories are wrong. Some fundamental market logic, such as the interest rate perspective, still has its value. Mr. Fu guided the students to explore the driving forces behind the market and gave an in-depth interpretation of the policy changes in the United States.
This Xi experience opened up new horizons for him to think critically and evaluate and interpret information in combination with basic economic knowledge, rather than to believe in any dogma or expert. Based on a few core economic indicators, he learned to make long-term predictions about the future.
Chinese EMBA
In addition, the market potential of South America has become his focus. In the class, Mr. Fu conducted a detailed analysis of the economies of Mexico, Brazil and other countries, which made him have a strong interest in the South American market. In fact, despite the challenges of team building, the speed and potential of South America's market growth is remarkable.
The depth and breadth of this education in NUS's EMBA classes is impressive. It is this kind of classroom charm that allows each student to experience a different academic baptism. The professor is not just an educator, but the kind of enlightenment mentor who can ignite the spark of inner thinking in students, guiding students to step out of their comfort zone, dare to question, and dare to explore.
This is what makes NUS EMBA unique: it not only provides knowledge, but more importantly, a platform for dialogue, exploration and growth. The professors here have profound academic backgrounds and rich practical experience, and they are not satisfied with teaching traditional textbook knowledge, but hope to discuss the frontier issues of modern economy, management and technological development through in-depth exchanges with students.
Ren Teng said with a smile that he not only learned knowledge here, but more importantly, he learned to think, question and innovate. This is a priceless harvest and the biggest charm of NUS EMBA classes.
In Ren Teng's life, family and work are like wings, he is not only reluctant to give up the hard work of his career, but also deeply affectionate to the warmth of home. Family and work, in his world, are always intertwined and balanced. He honestly admits that despite the constant challenges of time and energy, he is always looking for the best balance.
Ren Teng knows that high-quality companionship is far better than the accumulation of time. Whenever he is not working, he takes his children on a journey to explore the mysteries of this world. He knows that riding together and watching meteor showers together are precious moments in his children's memories, and they are also the most precious gifts he gives to his children as a father.
In addition to his family, sports also occupied his life. Ren Teng's love for rowing is not only a physical challenge, but also a mental exercise. He said that rowing is not only a physical competition, but also a mental competition. Every training, every competition, he challenges himself and seeks to reach his limits.
In rowing, he experienced what he called "mental toughness", that mental toughness. As he says, this tenacity is the key to success, whether in entrepreneurship or sports.
As the sunset wore on, we ended our interview with Ren Teng and brought the day to a successful conclusion. But every detail and fragment he described still swells in our hearts.
He recounted the journey from the entrepreneurial battlefield to the academic palace of NUS, and the tenacity and perseverance in it were awe-inspiring. Especially when he deeply explores the application scenarios of AI technology in the world, we see an entrepreneur who is truly exploring, full of endless curiosity and expectation for the future.
His deep affection for his family, his love for rowing, and his persistence in his work are like the three sides of a triangle, complementing each other and supporting the richness of his life. He is not so much a successful entrepreneur as an explorer of life, always in search of true self and meaning.
As we left the interview site, the city lights behind us gradually lit up, and the starry light seemed to echo every dream and pursuit that Ren Teng described. This traveler who crosses borders, technology and emotion tells us with his story:
The true value of life,
It often lies in continuous exploration and pursuit.
Source: National University of Singapore EMBA
TO