Desmond Ngai

Desmond Ngai is a senior strategic partnership and corporate development professional in the APAC media entertainment industry since 2007. He is currently Senior Assistant Vice President, Business Lead for OTT Partnerships at Astro, Malaysia's biggest public listed media company with TV, digital, radio and commerce businesses.

He recently left WebTVAsia as Senior Vice President, Global Alliances, where he was responsible for growing strategic alliances with global government, investor, media and commercial stakeholders. WebTVAsia is a digital entertainment company that built Asia’s biggest multi platform video network with 570 million subscribers and 5 billion monthly views, as official partner of Google, YouTube, Tencent, ByteDance, Weibo, Baidu, Twitter and more global platforms. He was instrumental in ground breaking Asian campaigns like Youku-Tudou’s Little Apple viral video (500 mil views & 30,000 parodies), WebTVAsia Awards and Viral Fest Asia music festival (200 mil & 250 mil social media reach respectively).

Prior to this, he was Head of Investment at Malaysian government agency Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC). Desmond also had stints with leading media companies Media Prima (pioneered Tonton OTT platform), Endemol and Total Sports Asia. He graduated with an MBA from Victoria University Australia and a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from University of Technology Malaysia. In 2014, he was selected as the first cohort of MaGIC’s e@Stanford Innovation & Entrepreneurship Program. He is passionate about empowering young leaders to achieve their fullest potential through mentoring, teaching and ecosystem collaborations. Desmond has volunteered as mentor for MaGIC, YCM, Monsta Asia plus other government bodies and NGOs.