Neelesh Bhatia | Senior Associate Director
National University Singapore

Neelesh Bhatia has spent his career building the bridges that startups need to grow—with purpose, across borders, and backed by real partnerships. Over the last three decades, he has lived and worked across India, the United States, the UAE, Singapore, and Indonesia—launching programs, mentoring founders, advising governments, and scaling ventures across Southeast Asia. Whether it’s designing national startup accelerators, growing online communities to hundreds of thousands of users, or brokering seven-figure public-private partnerships, his work has always focused on innovation that drives meaningful, measurable impact. As the founding director of SPINOFF at Singapore Polytechnic, Neelesh helped build one of Singapore's most active entrepreneurship education programs. As CEO of AKADASIA, his fifth startup, he led an EdTech platform that empowered over 300,000 teachers in underserved communities across South East Asia. Currently, at NUS Enterprise, he leads Southeast Asia growth and strategy for BLOCK71 and is the architect of the UniVentures program—supporting early-stage startups in Vietnam and across the region. Neelesh believes that great ecosystems don’t happen by accident—they’re designed, nurtured, and built around people bold enough to solve real problems. That’s what he does best.