Kian Chun Lim

CEO and co-founder of Ebb & Flow Group, and managing partner and co-founder of Cerana Capital.

After graduating with a law degree from King’s College London in 2016, Kian Chun set up a venture fund called Cerana Capital with two partners, focusing on early-stage investments in Southeast Asian start-ups like Fundnel and MoneyMatch. Two years later, after several F&B investments through Cerana, they consolidated these investments and went all-in into the F&B sector, starting a technology-driven F&B group called Ebb & Flow Group (E&F), which now operates 15 brands including Chin Mee Chin, The Dragon Chamber and Tigerlily Patisserie.

Over the past year, they have also ventured upstream into import/export, sourcing for various food products from Japan, China and Malaysia. Last month, E&F launched the Tabletop app, a food discovery platform that allows users to explore, share and order from unique F&B concepts and up-and-coming chefs in Singapore.

“We want to empower exciting chefs and brands, allowing them to connect directly with their customers and to improve the overall buying experience,” he says. “We hope to create an ecosystem in which chefs, brands and customers have a more personal and direct relationship, and where chefs and brands can easily tap into different streams of revenue.”

In addition, one of the main causes E&F supports is ending food insecurity. Throughout the pandemic, the group worked with Food Bank, Gojek, Deliveroo and Advo to deliver meals to those in need.