Why let others define what’s possible? The CEO of Louken Group is showing how conviction, culture, and clarity can put Southeast Asia’s founders at the forefront of global business.

By Zat Astha / 12 Aug 2025

This story is one of nine on The Peak Singapore’s Power List. The list is an annual recognition that celebrates and acknowledges individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, influence, and impact.

The theme for the class of 2025 is Vanguards, spotlighting business leaders who are boldly reshaping their industries, questioning outdated norms, and pushing boundaries with vision and conviction. At a time when conformity is often rewarded and change met with resistance, these individuals choose to lead from the front — not for applause, but because the future demands it.

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A business with a true brand moves culture. This is the line Lee Haoming returns to, almost like a personal refrain. It surfaces in his speech as a quietly loaded observation — a conviction that branding is less an adornment and more the architecture beneath everything worth building. For Lee, CEO of Louken Group, this belief isn’t a slogan. It’s a practice, a provocation, and a dare to do business with actual meaning.

From the outside, Lee carries a certain composure, the kind that makes his presence felt even in silence. His sentences are careful, but the intent behind them is unmistakable: “Branding has been treated like garnish. A logo, a tagline, a colour palette. What people miss is that it’s the strategy. It’s the spine.”

It’s a stance shaped through years of watching founders chase growth for growth’s sake — racing from round to round, burning out, losing sight of the reason they began. Beneath Lee’s calm is a hard-won certainty: it is possible to build differently.

Louken Group, at its core, is a venture builder unlike the familiar archetypes: no conveyor belt of pitch decks, no soulless sprints towards the next exit. Instead, Louken starts from the inside out, asking the only question that matters — does this business have the bones to hold meaning?

Lee’s stewardship means Louken backs identity-led ventures in sectors as disparate as biotech, food systems, human-centred AI, and sustainability. These aren’t companies chosen for their marketability, but rather because they have the potential to move culture and make Asian ambition visible on its terms.

A stand against smallness

For too long, Lee argues, the world has looked at Southeast Asia as a region that should “know its place.” He bristles at the inherited assumptions: “We’re taught to copy best practices, not create new ones. That mindset has limited our ambition, our identity, and our potential to shape global narratives. And that’s what we’re here to change.”

This is the vanguard as a daily act — a refusal to settle for participation when one could be designing the future. Lee is candid about the industry’s dominant logic working against this ethos: “This pressure to raise bigger rounds, chase inflated valuations, and ‘blitzscale’ even when the foundation isn’t ready. However, I’ve also seen what happens when businesses become too engrossed in that game. They grow fast but not deep. And eventually, they break.”

This awareness led Louken to back ventures with different DNA. The companies reflect this ethos — ImpacFat, the world’s first cultivated fish fat biotech company, and Omollomo, a Singaporean snack brand built on both nutrition and social inclusion. The process is patient, the scaling deliberate, and the results endure because they are designed to matter.

Louken itself stands as a study in regenerative building versus extraction. “We don’t build brands for attention, but rather, we build them for longevity, resonance, and legacy.” There is nothing performative about this commitment; Lee doesn’t measure impact in headlines or short-term wins: “I’m proud of choosing and committing to the long game, especially when everything around me glorified fast exits. I stayed focused on creating value, not just wealth. For me, this has never been about making headlines. It’s about becoming someone who can make a difference, even if it’s for just one person.”

Quiet victories, lasting change

These quieter victories — an entrepreneur empowered to leave a stifling job, a mentee who feels seen for the first time, a brand that dares to lead rather than imitate — are the real architecture of Lee’s career. They anchor him, even when he is not visible to the market.

“I’m not here claiming I can change the world. But I know that for the lives I’ve touched, the founders I’ve backed, the youths I’ve mentored, and the communities our ventures have uplifted, it mattered. One life changed is one world changed. That’s not just poetic. That’s real.”

But to be a vanguard in a system built on noise, speed, and volatility requires a fundamental rethinking of power itself. Lee’s understanding is neither performative nor transactional: “Real power is quiet. It’s not in domination; it’s in discernment. Not in the loudest voice, the biggest title, or the fastest move, but in what you choose to stand for when no one’s watching.”

For Lee, this means the “capacity to listen when it’s easier to speak, to stay when it’s easier to walk away, to hold clarity when everything feels uncertain.” The vanguard builds the room, makes it safer for others to speak, and holds the vision steady when the world veers towards chaos.

At Louken, this translates into a venture model that is intentionally slow and designed to last: “We empower founders, not puppeteer them. We don’t just inject capital; we co-build with belief. We scale brands not just with strategies but with soul.” The goal isn’t unicorn status but a regenerative ecosystem — an economy that is more equitable and human. “We’re helping founders unlock their story, scale with integrity, and enter markets with impact.”

Still, none of this comes easily. Lee is candid about the personal cost: “For the longest time, I wore resilience like armour. I thought being an entrepreneur, a builder, a leader meant carrying the weight quietly, solving everything myself, never showing fatigue, never slowing down.”

But he is unlearning that narrative: “Armour can also be a cage. I can’t build meaningful things if I don’t also protect what gives me meaning.” The journey now is to show up “as all of me, not just the parts that look like success on paper.” Presence, not perfection, is the greater feat.

The enduring mark of a vanguard

This ongoing process of unlearning keeps Lee grounded in his purpose. He doesn’t see leadership as unending hustle, nor every conversation as transactional. Some of the biggest unlocks have come “from the quiet moments like mentoring a youth, solo hiking in the mountains, or snowboarding just to breathe. That’s when I remember why I do what I do.”

He is, by his admission, “still unlearning the hustle. Still learning how to be more present. More human.”

There is integrity to Lee’s journey — one that refuses the false binary between impact and humility, ambition and care. He is, in the truest sense, a builder from the soul. Each venture Louken takes on, each founder it supports, is another step in rewriting the region’s place in the global imagination. Lee’s style isn’t to trumpet this ambition but to let the results speak: “A business without a brand can still make noise. But a business with a true brand? That’s what moves culture, creates value, and outlives its founders.”

To be a vanguard, in Lee’s telling, is to risk building enduringly, to outlast the cycles of hype and panic, to place a bet on substance in a world overrun by style: “Power is not something I wear. It’s something I wield with care. Not to impress. But to impact. Not to dominate. But to dare others to rise too.”

In an era that still measures success by the noise it makes, Lee Haoming stands as proof that the future belongs to those who build with conviction, clarity, and care — and who are willing to let their work outlive their names. In the end, perhaps the mark of a true vanguard isn’t visibility at all. It’s the silent, lasting difference they leave behind in the culture, the market, and the lives quietly, indelibly changed.

Read the original article on The Peak here.