kopi-C with AvePoint CEO: From building software add-ons to building data governance in Asia’s digital economy

For global tech firms, the Asia-Pacific region is no longer a “nice to have.” It is fast becoming the centre of gravity for digital transformation and cloud infrastructure. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the region is projected to account for nearly half of global GDP growth by 2040, and companies that anchor themselves here with regional ambition stand to win.

Singapore, often called the “Switzerland of Asia,” has in recent years positioned itself as the strategic launchpad for that journey—offering regulatory stability, talent, capital, and global connectivity. 

It is also where US-based AvePoint has built its AI research lab and Asia headquarters, and most recently announced its dual listing on the Singapore Exchange in September 2025.

To AvePoint CEO Tianyi Jiang, also known as TJ, the company’s story offers a blueprint for Singaporean entrepreneurs: think regionally from day one, and plug into the global platform economy.

Check out Beansprout's breakdown of AvePoint's listing on SGX here. 

"Singapore has a unique strength as a major business hub and as a truly Tier-1 B2B software market. It’s small, yes, but the level of sophistication among clients—from government to banks to universities—is world class."

Understanding AvePoint’s competitive positioning

AvePoint may not be a household name to those unfamiliar with the world of Software as a Service (SaaS), but in the world of enterprise data governance and cloud resilience, it is indispensable. 

In simple terms, they help organisations manage, secure and optimise the unstructured, or human-generated, data (emails, chat archives, contracts, files, etc) that form the backbone of company operations. This is what often falls through the cracks of modern IT systems.

For AvePoint, this began as a relationship with Microsoft more than two decades ago, almost by accident. 

When Microsoft first released its enterprise collaboration platform, SharePoint, it lacked a basic ‘recycle bin’ function. Over a single weekend, AvePoint’s founding engineers built the missing feature. It became their first commercial product, earning a few million dollars in revenue in its first year. 

When Microsoft later added this exact ‘recycle bin’ function, AvePoint simply moved on to solving the next layer of problems. This pattern of spotting gaps in Microsoft’s products and turning them into opportunities soon became its signature strategy.

Today, AvePoint is the largest independent software vendor in Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem, a status once seen as risky but that TJ considers a strength. 

In 2024, the company reported total revenue of US $330.5 million, up 22 percent year-on-year, while its SaaS revenue grew 43 percent to US $230.7 million. It achieved its first operating profit of US $7.2 million and ended the year with nearly US $291 million in cash and short-term investments.

“AvePoint stands at the forefront of addressing the pivotal challenges in data security, governance, and resilience,” says TJ. “Microsoft goes a mile wide and an inch deep; we go an inch wide and a mile deep.”

The partnership gives the firm a global platform without the burden of building its own cloud stack, and instant credibility with Fortune 500 clients who already operate within Microsoft’s ecosystem. 

It has also opened doors: once a trusted Microsoft partner, AvePoint is now welcomed by other cloud giants such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Salesforce, who see its track record in governance as proof of reliability.

The lesson for Singapore-based firms, TJ says, is that you don’t have to own a platform to win on it. By embedding themselves within larger ecosystems and focusing on specialised capabilities that customers need, companies can become invisible but indispensable.

“AvePoint stands at the forefront of addressing the pivotal challenges in data security, governance, and resilience ... Microsoft goes a mile wide and an inch deep; we go an inch wide and a mile deep.”

Asia-Pacific as the growth engine, coupled with Singapore’s strategic role

TJ observes that the Asia-Pacific market is accelerating into its next stage of digital maturity. 

Hence, as the world shifts into an AI-driven phase, AvePoint's capabilities—the governance, security, and management of data assets—are emerging as the most critical bottleneck in enterprise technology. 

“Asia as an economic bloc will soon reach the EU’s economic heft, and it’s growing much faster,” he says. 

“Everyone already knows Asia is the growth engine of the world for the next 10 or 20 years. The question is who gets to lead that growth.”

For AvePoint, the answer lies in Singapore.

“Singapore has a unique strength as a major business hub and as a truly Tier-1 B2B software market. It’s small, yes, but the level of sophistication among clients—from government to banks to universities—is world class. If you can succeed here, you can succeed anywhere.”

Accordingly, the Singapore team does more than sell software. It also acts as a systems integrator, designing solutions for complex, cross-border problems. 

“We always look at services with a product lens,” TJ explains. 

“One of our first large clients was the Monetary Authority of Singapore. We built their next-generation knowledge-management platform. That became a full-fledged records-management system now used by governments in Japan and the U.S.”

Singapore’s combination of trust, transparency and meritocracy is, in his view, unmatched in the region: “Government contracts here are truly merit-based. You win on the strength of your technical proposal.” 

This reputation, coupled with proximity to Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, has made Singapore an ideal springboard for regional expansion.

Think regional from day one

“If I were only a Singapore startup, it would be tough,” TJ observes. “But because we think regionally, we treat Singapore as our Asia headquarters—not just our market.” 

In every country where AvePoint operates, the country head is local, he says. “You have to have local leadership to bring a global mindset into a local context. Yes, think global, but act local. That’s how it matters on the ground.”

With operations across 18 countries, AvePoint has thrived on what TJ calls “a startup mentality at global scale”—small, empowered local teams plugged into a trusted brand. 

It puts into practice what he truly believes, which is that for many local SMEs and startups, the domestic market is too small to support true scale. 

TJ emphasises that success demands a regional-first mindset, recognising that neighbouring markets are distinct, not extensions of home. This means, for example, hiring native leadership in each geography. 

As Asia digitalises, the total addressable market remains enormous—Southeast Asia’s internet economy alone is projected to reach US $600 billion by 2030, according to the Google-Temasek-Bain e-Conomy SEA report (2023).

Firms grounded in Singapore yet driven by regional ambition are best placed to capture this.

“Everyone already knows Asia is the growth engine of the world for the next 10 or 20 years. The question is who gets to lead that growth.”

TJ’s message to Singaporean founders is direct: use Singapore’s governance, credibility and connectivity as leverage, but design from day one to operate regionally.

He adds: "As artificial intelligence moves from experimentation to the enterprise level, the debate is shifting from which algorithm to what data, whose governance, under what trust framework. Asia’s advantage may lie not just in speed and scale but in trusted, governed scale."

AvePoint’s journey—from a SharePoint plug-in to a global SaaS platform—illustrates what is possible when ambition meets discipline, governance meets growth, and when Singapore is treated as a springboard and not just a single market. 

As TJ concludes, AvePoint is “laser-focused on this opportunity” of building a billion-dollar ARR by 2029. And his strategy follows the advice he shares for Singaporean founders and investors: start local, scale regional, and anchor your strategy in trust.

About AvePoint 

AvePoint is a global leader in cloud-based data management, with a core focus on data governance, security, and compliance. 

Through the AvePoint Confidence Platform, AvePoint helps over 25,000 customers globally to prepare, secure, and optimise their critical data across Microsoft, Google, and other collaboration environments. 

The company serves a wide range of industries, including professional and administrative services, financial and insurance, and others. 

By offering end-to-end data management capabilities, AvePoint enables organisations to confidently migrate, secure, and govern their data in increasingly complex and regulated digital environments.

About kopi-C: the Company brew

kopi-C is a regular column by SGX Research in collaboration with Beansprout, a MAS-licensed investment advisory platform, that features C-level executives of leading companies listed on SGX. These interviews are profiles of senior management aimed at helping investors better understand the individuals who run these corporations.