Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) announced yesterday (11 May) the appointment of an Indian national, Mr Gaurav Sachdeva, to become its “Chief Product Officer” (CPO). This is a new role created by its CEO Lieutenant-General (NS) Ng Yat Chung, who took over SPH last year on 1 Sep 2017 after leaving NOL. Ng was the former Chief of Defence Force of SAF.

Since Ng became SPH CEO, the advertisement page count of Straits Times had slipped 12.7% year-on-year for 2Q in its financial year of 2018 (FY18). Stock brokerage firms like UOB Kay Hian has been recommending investors not to hold SPH shares and to sell them. “SPH remains structurally challenged with no floor to be found yet for its media business,” UOB Kay Hian said. SPH continues to see flat circulation revenue despite seeing an increase in number of digital subscribers while its advertising revenue continues to decline.

Role of “Chief Product Officer”

SPH said the role of “Chief Product Officer” is to help “drive its digital offerings”.

It added that Mr Sachdeva has some 14 years of experience in technology companies. This includes nine years in managing product development and five years as a senior research and development engineer.

“He was most recently head of product for growth hacking and innovation, and chief-of-staff for products at ride-hailing firm Grab. Prior to that, he was a product management leader for Autodesk (Asia),” ST reported.

SPH said that Mr Sachdeva’s experience in consumer-focused firms like Grab and Autodesk will help bring new product ideas and improve SPH’s existing digital media products to “better engage audiences”.

Mr Sachdeva said that he has full confidence that existing products will be enhanced and new ones developed to “stay ahead of changes”.

No experience in digital media



However, on detail examination, Mr Sachdeva does not appear to have much experience specifically in the digital media area. In fact, according to his LinkedIn information, he appears to have short stints in various tech companies not related to the media industry:

Before 1999: Studied at Delhi Public School, RK Puram in New Delhi

1999-2003: Delphi College of Engineering, Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science

2003-2004: Software Engineer at Atrenta Inc – Company creates a software platform to improve design efficiency for semiconductor and consumer electronics companies

2004-2005: University of Cambridge, Masters in Computer Science

2005-2009: Senior R&D Engineer at Synopsys Inc – Company creates chip simulation software for semiconductor companies

2009-2010: Indian School of Business, MBA

2010-2014: Product Manager at Adobe, India – Worked on Adobe Creative Cloud and Creative Suite (i.e, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc).

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Work experience in Singapore:

2014-2016: Global Product Manager at Autodesk – Worked on AutoCAD line of business

2016-2018: Head of Product at Grab – Worked on ride-hailing platform of Grab

Perhaps the appointment of a non-media related person to a top-job in SPH may suggest that the company wants to get into businesses outside of media? Another ride-hailing business to compete with Grab perhaps? Software for semiconductor industries? Better image or video editing software?

Nevertheless, the appointment of a foreigner to a high position in a government-linked company also begs the question: “Are there no qualified person among the more than 3 million Singaporeans able to take the job?”

230 staff retrenched just last year and more foreign desk journalists to be recruited

Last year, SPH retrenched 230 staff – nearly 200 newsroom and sales staff – as part of a 10 per cent reduction of the SPH workforce that was announced in October 2016.

Some were retrenched with little warning. Yahoo News Singapore reported that some employees came to work on 12 Oct to find their work accounts disabled, only to be informed later that they had to exit the premises by 6pm.

Subsequently, Ng told the retrenched staff in a town hall meeting that SPH faced an urgent need to “right-size and restructure” its core media business due to disruptions in the market. It had to reorganise its newsrooms and sales department to achieve greater efficiency and support its new media strategy.

At the same time, Warren Fernandez, editor-in-chief of the English/ Malay/ Tamil Media Group, told Straits Times staff about the paper’s intention to recruit more foreign desk journalists to compete with US newspapers in the region.

While SPH is experiencing decline in revenue, it still earned over 1 billion of operating revenue in FY2017

Jobs more than $12,000 a month not listed in national Job Bank

In any case, it’s likely that SPH would have been exempted from advertising Mr Sachdeva’s job on the national Jobs Bank since the monthly pay for his job would likely be more than $12,000.

The Jobs Bank is part of the government’s “fair consideration framework” to mandate that companies should consider employing Singaporeans first but many critics have complained that it is full of loopholes.

In defense of the $12,000 income ceiling, Ministry of Manpower wrote that many employers typically recruit for positions paying $12,000 and above using executive search firms, rather than through open advertisements.

MOM expects employers to instruct their headhunters to source for candidates on merit, including Singaporean candidates. It emphasied that if complaints are received about companies having nationality-based unfair hiring practices, they may be subjected to additional scrutiny and have their work pass privileges curtailed.