Interview: Kenny Liow, Global Vision Multimedia

• Features

• 22/06/2021

The Financial Times released its annual FT ranking of 500 of Asia Pacific’s high growth companies for 2021 [on.ft.com/2QqC7pM]. The list was compiled in partnership with Nikkei Asia and research provider Statista. It bears investigation seeing that the last year was one that was heavily disrupted by Covid-19.

Unsurprisingly, ecommerce companies made it to the top of the list. But nestled at number eight is Global Vision Multimedia [GVM], a Japanese technology solutions provider.

Kenny Liow, director at GVM, says: “We were very surprised when we found that we made the list. We are somewhat of a new player; the company was set up in 2016. But the people who make up GVM are very experienced and have many years of working in the technology industry. We may be headquartered in Japan and GVM is a Japanese company, but we have good teams in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Taiwan and Korea and this achievement was definitely a team effort.”

Seeing that the AV industry’s growth is linked to infrastructure investment, which in turn depends on GDP growth, how was GVM’s growth achieved?

Liow credits agility in the face of adversity as the first factor: “The year 2020 was a hard one for everyone and there was disruption in the industry and in our lives. We believe that you have to be able and willing to change the aspects you can change in response to disruption and that is what we did. Our approach was to first and foremost ensure the safety of our employees and then it was to ensure we could get back to work while following the rules and regulations set forth by the governments in the countries we operate. We’re not a big company or a normally structured enterprise so we were agile enough to be able to adapt to the disruption across our offices.”

Liow also identifies pivoting to a more holistic approach as a contributing factor: “When it comes to business growth, we are in the business of technology. That includes traditional AV solutions and systems, like those you find in meeting rooms or boardrooms. But we can also offer more than the traditional AV systems for spaces. Users need solutions to monitor and manage their microphones, speakers, monitors and more. In fact, GVM has staff that comes from the IT world so the expertise across all types of technology is already present. This approach and the specialities across technology verticals helped us because it meant that we could go and talk to clients about everything from infrastructure, cabling to videoconferencing and software. Moving forward, I think we’ll need to approach technology in this way to cater to a new generation of user.”

He continues: “Of course, there was a spike in videoconferencing as people saw the value it had. Unsurprisingly, we got a lot of inquiries from users about deploying videoconferencing solutions in their offices and workspaces.”

With this achievement already in the bag, can GVM improve its position for 2022? Liow concludes: “I think the disruption will have great impact in the short term and the long term. Looking at the immediate factors in play, we have to consider that there were lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings, and this has created a lot of pent-up demand for the leisure and entertainment sector. Vaccination plans are being rolled out and this means that in the near future we can maybe expect events and activities to resume. With this in mind, the leisure and entertainment sector is looking to upgrade its proposition and technology has a part to play in this. We’ve seen content creation and content consumption increase during the pandemic so there are a number of creative projection mapping solutions that can be implemented to attract visitors. People will need entertainment and technology will have to provide it.”