Professional Experience

White Star Capital (Singapore and Indonesia) 

• 2024-present: Venture Partner
  
  
  • Supporting on various financing activities, e.g., helped Singapore based startup to raise 2.5mn USD in venture debt and supported White Star's fund raise for its fund 4.
    
  • Acting as operational adviser for portfolio companies with focus on SAAS and market places.
    
• 2024-present: Executive Chairman/interim CEO at Flash Coffee (majority owned by White Star Capital)
  
  
  • Restructuring of Flash Coffee:
    
    • Engaged by White Star to restructure Flash Coffee and bring it back to growth trajectory and enable external funding, after White Star took full ownership of Flash Coffee.
      
    • Reorganized the company by finalizing the closures of 4 markets (HK, KR, TW, SG), franchising out the Thailand business to Turn Capital, and spinning out the Flash Coffee technology into a separate startup, enabling it to raise 1.5mn USD from 468 Capital, FoodLabs a.o..
      
  • Executed operational turnaround of remaining Indonesian business leading to revenue growth:
    
    • Revenue growth of 60% in 6 months and achieving positive EBIT on store level and after marketing spend.
      
    • Reduced allover company burn by over 75% to below 100k USD from originally 400k USD.
      
    • Operational turnaround mainly achieved by revamping of drinks menu (70% new items), increase in online delivery revenues (increased by 120%), push to marketing excellence, various in-store improvements (e.g., seating, store brush ups), as well as relaunch of the food offering.
      
  • Secured external funding in August'24 to be deployed for new store openings; leading the preparation for further fund raising activities.
    

foodpanda (Singapore) 

• 2017-2023: CEO
  
  
  • Elevated foodpanda to the forefront in the food delivery industry through unparalleled hyper-growth achievements:
    
    • Grew foodpanda's revenues from 50mn EUR p.a. in 2017 to 5.5bn EUR in 2023.
      
    • Achieved annual growth rate up to 4.3xr and average yearly growth of 120% for 6 years.
      
    • Moved foodpanda Asia from an initial valuation of <40mn EUR in 2016 to a valuation of estimated 2.5bn to 3.5bn EUR in 2023.
      
    • Successfully converted heavy investment situations towards hyper growth (up to -390mn EUR burn p.a.) and moved to positive EBIT while maintaining growth momentum (+20mn EUR in Q4 2024).
      
  • Rebuilding foodpanda as a self standing high performing company:
    
    • Rebuilt the APAC region as a new and self standing company after Delivery Hero acquisition and restructuring.
      
    • Built from scratch an APAC Singapore HQ; started with 4 employees, ramped up to 150 employees in first year, and 700 employees in 4 years across 4 HQ hub locations.
      
    • Implemented a standardized and high-performing culture, operational frameworks, and organizational structure across all 11 markets and HQ.
      
    • Delivered exceptional results in a fiercely competitive industry.
      
  • Assembled a new senior management team at HQ from inception, attracting top-tier global talent and elevating the majority of existing country CEOs to meet elevated standards.
    
  • Elevated foodpanda's reputation as a highly respected organization in the Asia Pacific region, becoming a coveted recruiting target for tier 1 companies including Amazon, Facebook, and Tik Tok.
    
  • Recognized with multiple best employer awards.
    
  • Lowest attrition in senior management team across all DH brands; annual unwanted churn below 5% on all-2 employees.
    
  • Moved foodpanda technology to best in class:
    
    • Took on interim Chief Product Officer for 2 years of the DH pandora group (Asia and EU tech platform), took over full technology stack, acted for 2 years in addition to CEO responsibility and led hands on all tech efforts with around 30% of time capacity.
      
    • Over a period of 4 years moved the technology from a competitive disadvantage and low stability to best in class in the region and on par with best in class world wide (on par with DoorDash, US, based on ext. benchmark), including metrics like feature throughput, conversion rate, and platform stability.
      
    • Moved from single location strategy to 4 tech hubs in Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey and Germany ramping up to 950 product and tech employees.
      
• 2015-2016: SVP Asia and CEO Singapore (Singapore)
  
  
  • Oversaw the Asia foodpanda markets with lean regional team and directly managed the Singapore country business in a double role.
    
  • Moved Singapore business to best in class within foodpanda:
    
    • Restructured the Singapore business from a starting point of disarray and moved it to largest revenue contributor across all markets despite rather small country size.
      
  • Pivoted operating model moving from restaurant handled delivery to in-house managed delivery operations:
    
    • Accomplished in record time of 6 months to avoid of being disrupted by launch of competitor Deliervoo.
      
    • Pivot to in-house delivery was done as the first country within foodpanda (against general group strategy); was later adopted as standard operating model of Delivery Hero and is key enabler of its competitiveness today.
      
  • Oversaw Asia business as Senior VP:
    
    • Took over additional managerial responsibilities for the region incl. deciding on investment priorities between APAC markets, coaching and enabling of country CEOs and their teams.
      
    • This was conducted with an extremely lean team of 3.5 employees (1 finance, 1 executive recruiter/HR, 1.5 operations/special projects).
      
• 2014-2015: Global Head of Business Development (Germany)
  
  
  • Globally executed country turnarounds, post merger integrations, and various complex project.
    
  • Post merger integrations:
    
    • Led more than 10 post merger integrations; most notable integrated country orgs are EatOye (Pakistan), 24h (UAE), Netpincer (Hungary) and Room Service (Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines).
      
    • Developed end-to-end business strategy post migration building the foundation for being clear market leaders in those countries today.
      
  • Country restructuring and interims country management:
    
    • Replaced senior management teams and turned around Poland, Slovakia, Mexico, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malays and the Philippines.
      
  • Initiated and led foodpanda's B2B offering:
    
    • Originated new business line for foodpanda focusing on offering for corporations to provide meal offering for their employees as part of their employee employee benefits.
      
    • Led all the product specifications and development efforts arriving at a very pragmatic first product which could be developed with moderate engineering effort and within only 2 quarters.
      
    • Identified top 12 markets with best product fit and oversaw and partially actively managed the roll out; this includes hands on hiring of 34 sales reps, getting buy in from country management, and managing the roll out of the technology.
      
    • Overachieving revenue targets by 20% and contribution margin targets by 35% before handing over the project.
      

McKinsey & Company (Germany and Switzerland) 

• 2008-2014: Consultant and Project manager
  
  
  • Specialized primarily in the chemicals, automotive, and semiconductor industries, with a focus on B2B marketing and sales, corporate strategy, business unit strategy, and strategic operations.
    
  • Leadership and project management:
    
    • Managed large consultant project teams, e.g., led team of 4 consultants to support successful product launches in the semiconductor industry.
      
    • Led large client teams, e.g., led taskforce of 15 people to realize revenue opportunities of €70M and to establish a new department to make impact sustainable.
      
    • Steered 3 client teams simultaneously located in Zurich, Moscow and Nagpur (India) for a chemicals company to develop and pilot a global sales transformation program.
      
    • Monitored and supervised 50+ projects during a €1.5B cost cutting initiative for an electric utilities company (as part of the project management office).
      
  • Strategy and implementation:
    
    • Developed country strategies in the South-East Asia region for a chemicals company resulting in an action plan with annual growth of 5-10% per country.
      
    • Developed and implemented business development and pricing strategy of a chemicals company which substantially contributed to increase revenues by 15% in the following year.
      
    • Conducted business case calculations of major projects for semiconductor client covering €200M investment volume, leading to reprioritization and cancelation of projects.
      
    • Supported controlling unit of automotive client to translate capex cash savings of €1.0B (realized and planned) into effect on EBIT till 2020.
      
  • Change management and communication:
    
    • Trained 438 middle managers on new commercial strategy by conducting 22 workshops across 5 continents within 7 weeks.
      
    • Developed innovative workshop concept to initiate cultural change in sales force, piloted with 22 sales representatives and managers, increased EBIT margin of pilot business lines by 3%.
      
    • Approach became part of global McKinsey C4P (Capability for Performance) initiative.
      
    • Represented McKinsey in interviews for leading German newspapers and consulting guidebooks to attract high potentials.
      

BMW Group (Germany) 

• 2007: Project manager of student team: Led 2 student project teams to develop innovative car body design and surface technologies.
  

Fiducia Management Consultants (Hong Kong) 

• 2006: Intern: Advised European clients on market entries in China.
  

Infineon Technologies (Germany) 

• 2004: Intern: Simulated DRAM devices and developed numerical solving algorithms.
  

• 2017-present: Angel investor and advisor
  
  
  • Early stage angel investor; tech focused and covering B2B supply chain and logistics, property tech, lifestyle tech, B2C communication tech provider, tech enabled F&B, a.o..
    
  • Providing advisory to group of startups (invested and not invested) incl on-site workshops, recurring brainstorming sessions, and recruiting support.
    

• 2011: INSEAD MBA Program, Class of December 2011 (Singapore and France)
  
  
  • Elected section representative for 72 students.
    
• 2002-2008: Technische Univsersität München (Germany)
  
  
  • "Diplom" in Physics (equ. to Masters degree), specialized in semi-conductor physics and quantum information theory, grade 1.6, co-published 2 research papers.
    
• 2004-2007: Manage&More (Germany)
  
  
  • Scholarship program for science students with focus on entrepreneurship, innovation, and project management: led and participated in numerous student projects.
    
• 2006: University of Canterbury (New Zealand)
  
  
  • Research project in experimental nano-cluster physics.
    

• English (Fluent)
  
• German (Native)
  

• Longevity and health.
  
• Crossfit "casual competitive": 2nd place at Hyrox Singapore, 6th place at BKK Throwdown.
  
• At university middle distance running: Southern German Champion over 1500m, preparation team for the Olympics.