Our Team
Energy Strat Asia’s founders and executive team are traditional and new energy specialists. Our integrated team in Singapore is dedicated to accelerating your market entry across the region
Founders & Management Team
Tim Rockell
Founder, Managing Director, Growth, Energy Specialist
Tim founded Energy Strat Asia in 2019 to support specialist energy services and infrastructure technology companies wanting to develop and grow in Asia. Having spent over two decades in KPMG, joining in the United Kingdom 23 years ago, he relocated to Singapore in 2012 establishing the KPMG Global Energy Institute for Asia Pacific. He has relationships with large energy companies interfacing with government, regulators, academia and financial players.
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He has extensive experience of Middle and Far East Asian markets. From 2000-2009 he was the Global Executive Director of KPMG’s Energy & Natural Resources practice under a rapid growth phase; based in London and Bahrain. He is a sales and marketing professional, member of the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing and holds an executive MBA from ENPC Paris, France.
He is a Management Board Member of the Energy Studies Institute at the National University of Singapore and Chairman of the Energy & Utilities Business Group at the British Chamber of Commerce Singapore. He is a Fellow of the Energy Institute.
Vandana Hari
Founder, Insights, Oil Markets Specialist
Vandana Hari is Founder & CEO of Vanda Insights, a Singapore-based oil and gas markets analysis and research company. She has over two decades of experience providing intelligence on the global energy markets to stakeholders in the industry, related sectors, policy-makers, and wealth managers. Prior to launching Vanda Insights in September 2016, Vandana served in various leadership positions at S&P Global Platts, a leading information provider on the global energy, petrochemicals, metals and agricultural markets.
Sam Sugavanam
Advisory Board Member, Oil & Gas Sector
Sam is an experienced oil & gas professional having worked in the UK’s North Sea, including upstream operations, maintenance, shutdowns and project completions. Sam has deep knowledge and understanding of capital projects, FPSO projects and mid-stream terminals.
Blending strategic thinking with hands-on experience across the value chain, Sam is able to design optimisation solutions, risk management, contracting and procurement consulting, construction management, and production efficiency strategies.
Sam has an MBA from the National University of Singapore with specialisations in Strategy and Finance. He was the president of the NUS MBA Energy Club and is passionate about the current trends in the sector ranging from alternative sources of energy and renewables, digitalisation and automation in the sector. Sam possesses a good understanding of regulatory regimes and is well informed about the changes and developments in the energy industry as well as global trends.
Advisory Board and Investment Committee
Shahrukh Marfatia
Extensive hands-on global and regional experience across multiple industries in countries such as Singapore, India, China and Indonesia. Supporting new ventures from the west, with cultural, social and talent attraction, development and retention aspects across ASEAN and Asia. Board Director, Advisor / Mentor with 40 years experience with leading global companies. Former Global HR Vice President, Global Commercial, Royal Dutch Shell.
Advisory Board and Investment Committee
Stephen Highfield
Steve is a commercial negotiator and qualified chartered accountant with over 25 years of experience in the energy sector including working for BG Group in Singapore. Currently based in Aberdeen, UK, he has held international responsibilities in India, China, Asia Pacific, North Africa, Russia and FSU and spent 6 years in Singapore working with energy companies, academia (NUS and NTU) and government bodies such as the EDB (Economic Development Board) and MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore). Steve’s commercial experience includes M&A, new country entries, negotiation of fiscal terms, field development and operations, access to infrastructure and decommissioning.
Advisory Board and Investment Committee
Santosh Ambike
Strategic and financial expertise, a Chartered and Management Accountant with strong commercial capability including two decades at BP in business development, finance and risk roles across the Middle East and Pacific regions in Asia. Deep cultural knowledge and a wide spectrum of interface management experience. International project management, business development, operating model creation, joint ventures and partnering, legal frameworks expertise. Led mergers and acquisitions, divestments in the oil & gas, LNG, energy, products, lubricants, and power sectors.
Advisory Board and Investment Committee
Steve Puckett OBE
A business leader who, after a successful international career with ExxonMobil corporation where he held Asia-wide responsibilities, has founded a number of enterprises in the energy, tech and financial space.
He has broad commercial and financial experience and leads a business focused on energy strategy development and acquisitions.
Currently a board member of both public and privately held businesses, of non-profits and academia, he has been in the energy space for more than 40 years and has been based in Asia for 30 years.
He is extensively networked having held various industry leadership roles as President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Singapore and Chair of Britain in South East Asia. He is a chartered engineer, former Chairman and a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Singapore.
Partnerships
Vanda Insights is a Singapore-based provider of intelligence on the global energy markets, launched in 2016. The venture was born out of a desire to extract the signal from the noise in the complex and often volatile oil markets. Our succinct and clear macro analysis is relied upon by thousands of readers globally, including those doing business directly or indirectly in the physical commodity and derivatives markets; wealth managers; governments, regulatory bodies and think-tanks; as well as trade organizations and educational institutions.
