Soma Somasundaram
Chairman and CEO
Soma heads the ET Group companies since 2009. He was a Risk Advisory Services partner in a Big 4 firm for 8 years, serving in senior roles in Japan and Asia at various times. Soma has consulting experience covering GRC, risk management, transactions (M&A) advisory bolstered by board advisory and executive management experience. He combines this with his AI/ML and NLU/LLM experience to help launch a series of cloud-based products.
He has worked extensively with multinational firms in Japan and overseas on cross-border engagements. He has advised companies in the IT, healthtech, telecom, banking, securities, insurance, real estate and manufacturing industries on services including Due Diligence, Business Continuity, Privacy & Security as well as Corporate Governance, Internal Audit, Compliance and Risk Management.
Soma is a founding board member of the entrepreneur organization TiE’s (https://tie.org) Tokyo chapter and works actively with ventures in Japan and Asia.
Mitsuru Asai
Senior Adviser
Mr. Asai joined Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. (now KPMG) in Japan. He conducted statutory audits for a wide range of industries including general trading, manufacturing including electric machinery, telecommunications, shipping, and financial industry including insurance.
Mr. Asai set up KPMG’s consulting practice in Japan becoming the representative director and president of the subsidiary. After the consulting practice was spun out from the group, he proceeded to head the Risk Management firm KPMG Business Assurance Co., Ltd. leading it from a handful of consultants to almost 200 in a few years.
Mr. Asai led the firm through fundamental changes in the industry as well as a successful merger with Andersen. After serving as a partner at the Audit firm also throughout his career, he retired from KPMG in June 2014. He joined ET Group as a Senior Adviser the same year.
Tokuji Kobayakawa
Director
Koba is a data scientist with a track record spanning enterprise architecture and project management across multiple industries. A graduate of Physics from the University of Tokyo, he is the joint holder of a patent developed while working at Canon.
A guest researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in NLP, Koba is versatile and provides the creative spark to solutions, while handling Python and web services to create POCs and lead feasibility studies. He joined ET after a distinguished career in corporate IT involving multiple countries and an early member of the team creating NLU-based solutions.
Yutaka Kitade
Adviser
Yutaka has unique experience in assisting with the globalization of Japanese companies – MNCs and startups. From market surveys and strategy planning to financing he has guided his clients towards their goal with an end-to-end approach and dedication.
Anchored with a background in marketing and operations his footwork covers Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Europe and ASEAN. His credentials include acquistion of seed funding to the listing of his client companies on the Mothers section of Tokyo Stock Exchange.