Wei Cong Seah is the Investment Manager at ARKRAY CVC, the corporate venture capital arm of ARKRAY Inc, where he is currently in charge of the CVC’s Southeast Asia and East Asia investments in the healthcare sector, the latest investment being SwipeRx in Indonesia.

Before ARKRAY CVC, Wei Cong started his career as a corporate lawyer, before becoming a venture capitalist at SPH Ventures and NUS Enterprise.

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

As a venture capitalist, I look for and invest in early-stage to growth-stage startups in the broader healthcare sector.

Being in charge of our Southeast Asia and East Asia investments, my goal is to increase our investments in this region, and support our portfolio companies’ growth by leveraging ARKRAY's business assets.

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

I started my career as a corporate lawyer, specializing in M&As, private equity, and venture capital deals in the region before switching career paths to become a VC.

Looking back, I can say that being a lawyer turned VC was quite rare back then (perhaps it still is), and I had my share of setbacks going off the beaten path—although it worked out in the end.

Hence, I would encourage aspiring founders looking to make the leap of faith career-wise to do so, as you never know where the road might lead to.

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

That would be helping to start and build out ARKRAY CVC from scratch as the CVC’s first hire.

This being my first time launching a CVC unit, the entire process of assembling all the pieces together to create a CVC from the ground up was a culmination of my prior experience as a VC.

It felt especially rewarding to know our (now not so new) CVC has since played an active role in supporting and funding healthcare startups in this region.

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

Due to my current investment focus on healthcare, I have been looking quite closely at impact-related and ESG sectors, like planetary health, climate and sustainability, agritech & food security etc.

Some people may wonder about the relevance here, but human healthcare is quite intricately linked to other ESG sectors like planetary health and climate change. For instance, environmental degradation, loss of arable land, and climate change has brought about increased rates of diseases (like vector-borne diseases, respiratory illnesses due to air pollution, heat-related ailments, conditions resulting from malnutrition etc).

Hence, healthcare ought to be viewed holistically considering the interconnectedness of human and planetary health, and investments in the healthcare sector should ideally generate positive social impacts alongside financial returns—especially in public health.

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

Always remain curious, keep an open mind, and listen rather than just hearing.

‍🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

I am a bit of a history and international affairs buff, and have always been interested in the complex interplay between history, current affairs, and political economy.

In a way, past events and political dynamics between nations have shaped our contemporary political and economic landscapes, and the world we live in today—and this is an area of interest I can speak with like-minded individuals at length on.

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

As someone who is into sci-fi and AI, I would highly recommend Person of Interest.

A criminally underrated show that not only maintains its quality throughout all its seasons, its portrayal of complex themes surrounding AI and how an artificial superintelligence would be like if it exists is still quite pertinent in today’s world (maybe even more so).

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Anything that has dark chocolate in it!

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FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.