Our Story
To Heal, To Restore
Latest Message from our CEO
Arukah was established during the pandemic amidst predictions that up to 100 million people across Asia might fall below $2 a day - many of whom are farmers.
Fast forward to 2024, we have gone live on two critical project blueprints that we aim to scale across the Global South with carbon markets and cutting edge digital sensors and payments infrastructure.
As we prepare for 2025, I want to thank our team, partners and investors for believing in, joining and persevering on our vision - of smallholder farmers and the Global South as critical partners in high quality, Gigaton-scale decarbonisation and carbon removal.
We closed the year with a first in the world blueprint for household biogas from farmer-level real-time tracking to verifiable digital payments to farmers - featuring 100% tracing and majority revenue share for farmers and local ecosystems, to our knowledge the first in market in over a decade for this Corsia compliant methodology. We are also soon commencing the commissioning of a large biochar plant in Cambodia, which will be a blueprint for our biochar at scale - diverting waste burning, and unlocking improved productivity and access to new incomes.
We look forward to partnering with you - and many more - in the coming year ahead.
Here's to a restful close to 2024, and an exponential 2025 ahead!
Our Values
Our Team
Arukah is built by Global Experts in Capital Markets, Technology, Financing Emerging Markets & Agriculture, Asia Policy, Biomass Processing.
Our Leadership
Joanna Yeo
CEO
Read MoreJoanna Yeo is the founder of Arukah, which is scaling high integrity waste to energy and carbon removal in Asia and Africa, with a 50% income share to participating local ecosystems. She has strong conviction on the potential to lift billions out of poverty with verified data, new technology for secure payments and settlement, and financing for scalable access to sustainable, fast growing markets. Joanna is currently an impact investment committee member of the UN Sanitation and Hygiene Fund, an advisor to Figure Technologies, and has previously served as an independent non-executive board director of Collectius, a SE Asian partner for the World Bank IFC's $40Bn DARP program. She started her career in private equity at Morgan Stanley and Keppel Corporation, and in data science at Stanford and Harvard. Joanna holds degrees from Harvard, Stanford and Cambridge.
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Zech Lung
Operations, Projects (Engineering)
Read MoreZech Lung leads operations and projects (engineering) for Arukah. Previously COO and head of operations for water treatment companies, he has fifteen years of experience spanning regional operations, project management, finance, and engineering, and has built and optimized mission-critical systems, from last-mile energy access to industrial water treatment.
Zech is driven by the intersection of technology, finance, and impact to accelerate resilient infrastructure for underserved communities. He holds degrees from MIT, Tsinghua, and NTU.
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Nicole Mah
Projects, Policy Engagement
Read MoreNicole Mah leads projects and policy engagement for Arukah. Her passion is regulatory strategy for climate markets, urban sustainability, and the built environment - and designing governance frameworks that unlock scalable, high-integrity climate solutions. With over seven years in policymaking at the National Climate Change Secretariat in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Nicole has shaped climate market regulations and urban development policies in Singapore. She holds degrees from Cambridge and Columbia.
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Bryan Hugill
Carbon Credit Project Development
Read MoreBryan Hugill leads carbon credit project design and development at Arukah. With over twenty years of experience advising global DFIs and agriculture financiers—including IUCN, WWF, ADB, and UNEP—he focuses on biochar production from agricultural waste, sustainable livestock systems, and insect-led food waste processing. Bryan also owns and operates an internationally certified organic rice farm, mill, and farmer cooperative, where he has worked for seventeen years to advance smallholder-led regenerative agriculture.
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Ferdi Kurt
Blockchain
Architecture, Engineering
Read MoreFerdi Kurt architects blockchain infrastructure for regulated finance, secure data, and scalable digital assets. With a decade of experience in smart contracts and blockchain engineering, he has built high-security financial systems, including digital asset custody at Securrency (acquired by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation - now DTCC Digital Assets), decentralized storage solutions at Filecoin, and privacy-focused blockchain infrastructure at Midnight. Previously as lead Solidity engineer at IOHK, Ferdi also developed asset-backed stablecoins and off-chain payment solutions for rural economies.
Read LessLinkedInOur Advisors and Investment Committee
Simon Page
Credit & Risk
Read MoreRead LessSimon is a seasoned Chief Risk Officer and credit expert -he has been Group Chief Risk Officer at Bank of China-Fullerton Community Bank, before moving to CreditEase as the Head of European Investment for the FinTech fund in 2016. He has also served as Chief Risk Officer for China Bohai Bank and Country Chief Risk Officer at Standard Chartered, UAE.
Simon graduated in Economics from Trinity Hall, Cambridge and Finance at London Business School before working at Barclays Group as Head of Portfolio Management. He speaks fluent Chinese having lived in China for 15 years and now is based near London.
Matthew Gamser
Public & Private Finance
Read MoreRead LessMatthew Gamser has over 40 years’ experience in private enterprise and financial sector development. He worked for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, for 18+ years in various positions from Washington, DC, and Hong Kong, where he has focused on SME finance and on financial sector development. In his last role prior to retiring from the IFC, Dr. Gamser was the Founder and former (retired) CEO of the SME Finance Forum, the world’s leading center for knowledge exchange, good practice promotion and networking for the finance industry in this field. The SME Finance Forum is managed by the IFC for the G-20 countries’ Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion.
Dr. Gamser started his career with 25 years in management consulting and in senior leadership in an international NGO. He holds A.B. and A.M. degrees from Harvard University, and M.Sc. and D.Phil degrees from Sussex University (UK), where his work focused on the management of technological change.
Lionel Yeo
Singapore and SE Asia
Management & Policy
Read MoreRead LessLionel served in the Singapore Public Service for 22 years, and his appointments included CEO (Singapore Tourism Board), CEO (Civil Service College), Deputy Secretary (Public Service Division), Director (Trade/MTI) and Director (Economic Programmes/MOF).
In 2018, he transitioned to the private sector and became CEO Advisor at Grab, working directly with the co-founders on strategic issues and helping to pave the way for Grab’s eventual NASDAQ listing in 2021.
In 2020, he took on the role of CEO of the Singapore Sports Hub – the iconic USD1 billion facility which hosts the largest sports and entertainment events in Asia. He negotiated a successful project exit for the private sector consortium in 2022. Lionel is currently an independent director on SGX-listed telco StarHub Ltd and on car-sharing platform GetGo Technologies Pte Ltd.
Yuki Yasui
Sustainable Finance and Carbon Markets
Read MoreRead LessYuki is a seasoned expert in sustainable finance with over 20 years of experience. She served at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative from 2002 to 2022, where she played a key role in advancing the sustainability practices of financial institutions globally and especially in the Asia Pacific. Since 2022, Yuki has been the Managing Director of the Asia Pacific (APAC) Network at the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), leading efforts to mobilize the financial sector in support of global net-zero targets.
A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), Yuki trained and worked at one of the Big Four accounting firms. She is currently based in Singapore and has lived and worked in Bangkok, Geneva, and London.
Yuki holds a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics (LSE) and an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford.
Wai Kit Koh
Asian Emerging Mkts and Private Assets
Read MoreRead LessKoh Wai Kit brings over a decade of investment experiences, a vast network, and expertise. As managing partner of East Ventures, and founding member of Pavilion Capital, a Temasek subsidiary focused on Asia private equity and venture capital, he spearheaded investments in China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Prior to setting up Pavilion Capital, Wai Kit served in investment, strategy and portfolio management functions at Temasek.
Before joining the private sector, Wai Kit was a member of the Singapore Administrative Service where he was involved in public policy formulation and implementation. Wai Kit received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2001.
Pieter Franken
Hardware & Software Expert
Read MoreRead LessPieter Franken is a seasoned technologist and the co-founder of Safecast. He is a technology advisor to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), a researcher and guest professor at Keio University, and a researcher at MIT Media Lab.
Pieter has built technology for financial services for over 30 years, including as chief technology officer (CTO) for Union Digital Bank and Monex Group, and deputy CTO for Shinsei Bank. He started his career as a researcher at Panasonic and Hitachi.
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