Harish Subramaniam Takes on the Roles of Chief Digital Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at IRGA

IRGA Sdn Bhd, an agritech solutions provider, announced today that its Co-Founder and Executive Director Harish Subramaniam will be taking on the new executive roles of Chief Digital Officer and Chief Marketing Officer for the company.

This comes in lieu of the company wishing to place Harish, who has an extensive background in digital business, customer experience, digital transformation, and marketing, to drive IRGA’s product innovation and digital platforms together with brand and marketing.

IRGA brings together extensive data analytics, field research and product development strengths to optimise the use of technologies through an integrated digital platform to improve plantation and farm productivity, create new economy jobs, address global food security challenges and enhance food sustainability for generations to come.

As digital technologies are one of the company’s key offerings, Harish will take a more centralised role in building the digital platforms and driving innovation and customer experience for R&D projects.

Harish has been directly involved in the establishment of several digitally focused business start-ups and is thus uniquely positioned to offer his experience in managing his new roles with IRGA.

He has a Postgraduate in Digital Business from Emeritus Institute of Management Singapore in collaboration with MIT Management Executive Education & Columbia Business School Executive Education, which has provided an excellent foundation to support his career in digital business management and platforms.

Early on in his career he spent nine years with Leo Burnett Advertising/ARC Worldwide, where he led and set up a Digital & Interactive division and worked on many local and multinational brands. While there, he established a strong team and picked up many creative and industry awards.

Harish naturally gravitated towards more entrepreneurial pursuits in digital in the successive years, founding Amphibia Digital in 2008, which grew to be one of the leading independent digital agencies in Malaysia. Amphibia Digital was the founding member and himself the secretary of the Malaysian Digital Association (MDA), a pioneering body established to shape the growth of Malaysia’s digital economy.

He was engaged by The iA Group in 2014, a leading technology consultancy company to setup iA Digital, specialising in Cloud, Fintech and Smart Cities Solutions.

The following year, he joined a B2B fintech payment startup, where he was part of a founding team that developed two separate fintech-payments business models. When 2019 rolled in, Harish joined 27 Group to setup 27 Digital, focusing on Digital Transformation and Digital Ventures. At 27 Digital he developed and consulted various clients on the effective implementation of their digital transformation strategies, in addition to working on several smart city projects for town councils in Malaysia.

It was on the side of 27 Group’s venture arm where IRGA was initially formed as one of its key ventures, having observed the issues faced by the plantation industry where digital and data can be used to solve key aspects of the agriculture value chain, especially in in-field operations, management, and food production efficiency.

In his new capacity with the company, Harish will also be taking charge of driving the company’s growth in the areas of customer value, data, and innovation, ensuring that IRGA continues to remain at the forefront of available digital solutions and is able to deliver them effectively and dynamically to its clients at all stages of the company’s growth.

He will be driving the R&D roadmap for IRGA’s hardware and software platforms development, providing the vision and insight required to ensure that its digital solutions are versatile, effective, and forward looking. M.R. Chandran, chairman of IRGA, was ebullient about Harish taking a more central role in the company’s digital and marketing affairs.

“Harish with his unique skills and experience in Digital and Data Platforms will bring the creative elements into the organisational excellence, business innovation and sustainability of IRGA’s business operations,” commented IRGA Chairman and the honorary RSPO member.

As it moves ahead with its product rollouts in 2022, Harish will ensure that the company continues to meet the highest standards in its digital platforms and R&D projects.