People-first approach to deep-tech
He had set his sights on a PhD and a professorship in physics and mathematics. Still, life had other plans for Mr Chandran Nair, 56, now the CEO of Universal Vapour Jet Corporation (UVJC), a Singapore-based deep-tech startup.
Lighting up the ceremonial display stand at UVJC’s recent launch of its global headquarters at Mapletree Hi-Tech Park @ Kallang Way on Oct 28 was not the future Mr Chandran had imagined when he was a postgraduate student at Arizona State University in the United States.
While pursuing his master’s degree in the mid-1990s, Mr Chandran’s roommate asked for help in distributing his resume at a career fair. It was there that Mr Chandran caught the attention of a recruiter from National Instruments (NI), a global provider of automated testing and measurement systems.
“I told him (NI) I was not interested in a job, but he kept on talking, and told me to just write down what I do, so my resume was actually handwritten,” Mr Chandran recalled.
He got a callback, and like most university students living off a scholarship, he couldn’t resist a free weekend trip to Austin, Texas, for the job interview – a move that would slingshot him into a 27-year career in the technology sector.
After completing his master’s degree, Mr Chandran joined NI in 1997 as a product manager. Over the next 21 years, he rose through the ranks to become the company’s managing director and vice-president for Asia Pacific (APAC), and was responsible for the successful expansion of its business throughout the APAC region.
It’s his tenure at NI that Mr Chandran credits as playing the most instrumental role in shaping his management philosophy and business strategy.
He had entered the company at the onset of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and while massive layoffs were the knee-jerk reaction from many businesses at the time, NI took a different approach.
Mr Chandran cited his then-CEO, who steadfastly said, “If the first answer is layoffs, then you have very little value to me. First show me that you’ve thought through the problem, how it impacts people.”
This people-first approach has greatly influenced Mr Chandran’s leadership ethos, which places a strong emphasis on building a technically capable and reliable team.
“The secret to running a technology company is to know what kind of questions to ask so that you get your team thinking. For that, you need to have a very competent team that can decipher through the multitude of choices and problem statements.”
His ability to manage people from different cultures and backgrounds also stems from his varied childhood experiences. Due to his father’s job as an electrical engineer, Mr Chandran’s family lived in various places, including Mumbai, Shimla, and Bengaluru, with a four-year stint in Dubai, before returning to Bengaluru when he was a teenager.
In 2003, at the age of 32, Mr Chandran moved to Singapore to head NI’s APAC division. Despite stepping into a senior leadership role at a relatively young age, he found managing people more interesting than challenging, especially those with high potential.
“In general, people who are brilliant can sometimes be eccentric, which means you really need to understand their motivations and try to align them with the interests of the company. You have to find a common goal for both the individual and the organisation.”
Based on this principle, Mr Chandran was able to expand NI’s initial 10-member APAC team to some 1,000 employees across Southeast Asia by 2018.
In 2019, he joined ST Engineering as president of the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Business unit, before assuming the helm of AEM Holdings, a local multinational technology company, as president and chief executive officer from 2020 to 2024.
UVJC currently has 15 employees, and will invest S$50 million in equipment and talent over the next five years to commercialise its proprietary universal vapour jet printing (UVJP) technology.
A subsidiary of the Nasdaq-listed Universal Display Corporation (UDC), a major developer of OLED materials used in smartphone and TV screens, UVJC was established in 2024 to further develop UDC’s proprietary thin-film printing technology, producing manufacturing solutions for the semiconductor and pharmaceutical industries.
UVJP technology precisely deposits thin films of materials without the need for masking, offering a cleaner, faster and more efficient alternative to traditional manufacturing methods, UVJC noted in a press statement on Oct 28.
While Mr Chandran had previously intended to take on a consultant role after exiting AEM Holdings, the potential of UVJC’s technology is what drew him to resume an executive role, he highlighted.
“I like building teams, and I like translating technology to commercialisation. When the team at UDC were willing to move it to Singapore and to grow a team from scratch, it kind of interested me,” he said. “The potential for impact is high. Our early runs on pharmaceutical applications tested well, so based on the strength of the technology, I’m very convinced.”
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3 Jul 2025 19:39
