Southeast Asia is ‘hungry for innovation’ and eager to leapfrog, says SAP’s new APAC president Verena Siow

Smaller, less digitized Southeast Asian markets are adopting AI-native systems faster than mature economies—partly because they don’t have to deal with the baggage of legacy infrastructure.

“Southeast Asia holds a lot of market potential because it’s very hungry for innovation,” Verena Siow, SAP’s new APAC chief, tells Fortune in an interview at the firm’s Singapore office. “The economies which had a later start are looking to leapfrog into the latest and greatest tech.”

Southeast Asia, home to young, digitally-savvy populations and a rising middle class, offers fertile ground for leapfrogging, a phenomenon where countries bypass traditional stages of development and move directly towards newer technologies and business models.   

For European software giant SAP, this has translated into burgeoning interest in its business AI propositions. “Companies in this region tend to have fewer resources and smaller IT departments, so they’re looking to move straight to the cloud, rather than explore on-premise software, which requires more maintenance,” Siow explains.

She points to regional firms like transport conglomerate ComfortDelGro, and carriers like Thai Airlines and Singapore Airlines, as early adopters of AI. (In May, SAP unveiled a new business AI platform, which brings together existing........

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