Get to know the people behind My Republic

The new competitor of telco giants has two founders who were former executives of StarHub.

The founders are:

Malcolm Rodrigues: CEO & Co-founder

Malcolm was Vice President of StarHub International & Wholesale when he led his team to win the bid to set up and operate Singapore’s Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN). He then transferred to help establish this new Operating Company, which today, has come to be known as Nucleus Connect.

KC Lai: Chief Commercial Officer & Co-Founder

In a career spanning over 20 years, KC has held leadership positions at all the Telcos in Singapore including serving as StarHub’s Senior VP of Consumer Sales for 10 years. In an email to Singapore Business Review, a spokesperson from My Republic says that KC has always stood for the underdogs. “He has successfully helped build Telco companies from ground zero to billion dollar businesses. He is also responsible for crafting the strategic initiatives for StarHub, MFONE Cambodia, making them a formidable force in the Telco industry,” the email read.

Greg Mittman: V.P. & Co-Founder

Greg was first acquainted with the Singapore NBN in 2006 when he was tasked to lead Alcatel-Lucent’s NBN team. According to the spokesperson, Greg worked closely with Singapore’s IDA in representing the company through the government’s extensive 5-year industry dialogue process, when views on how to develop and roll-out the Singapore NBN were canvassed from the industry.

“With Alcatel-Lucent having won a $70m supply deal into the Singapore NBN, Greg’s team was responsible for giving Nucleus Connect post-sales support in business development and marketing as they rolled out their business. It was during this time that Greg worked closely with the team of Malcolm Rodrigues, then head of Sales & Marketing at Nucleus Connect, and when they began to share their views on the exhilarating potential of the Singapore NBN,” said the spokesperson.

According to Malcolm, My Republic aims to be a credible alternative to the current 3 telcos and to be recognized by all Singaporeans as the most innovative and customer-centric operator in Singapore offering customers a Next Generation service experience on the Next Generation network.

He says that their biggest challenge is awareness and credibility. “Most customers have not heard of us yet. The ones that do and try our services, recommend friends and family. There is extremely good feedback on the all the online forums. We believe that through our multi-pronged go-to-market model which includes over 200 dealer storefronts, roadshows, direct sales, and targeted advertising (traditional and online), we can overcome this challenge fairly soon. We have also found that word-of-mouth is a very powerful awareness tool, especially with the extent of social media use by people today,” says Malcom.