Barani Krishnan
barani@neverforget.cloud
Founder, Americas Editor
Barani began his journalistic career in 1988 with newspapers in his Malaysian home city of Kuala Lumpur, before turning correspondent for wire services Agence France Presse and Reuters. A writer on political risk and financial markets, he moved to New York in 2006, where he helped Reuters build out its coverage of the investment story in energy and commodities, before leaving for stints in content marketing and satellite data gathering.
A financial journalist most of his life, he also loves telling stories about people. Over the years, he has written dozens of stories about ordinary people who left the world after making an extraordinary impact on those around them. Whether it’s a postman, plumber or portfolio manager, his maxim is: “Everyone has a story to tell”. When the Covid-19 struck, Barani realized that it deprived many of the opportunity to say even proper goodbye to their loved ones. In such times of distress, it was hard for people to coalesce, organize and create the memories that would do justice to the departed.
It was this that drove him to found neverforget.cloud to ensure that everyone, regardless of circumstances, could have their story told — and never be forgotten.
Jahabar Sadiq
Contributing Editor
Jahabar Sadiq has been writing forever — well at least since 1984 — and later went into photography and videography too, telling stories in various mediums.
He has been through newspapers, wire services, television production and finally ended up running several news portals and curiously, one for careers as well.
He even went to jail, fighting a kleptocratic government. What it all means is he focuses on people and their stories in various formats. The smile, the frown, the life untold, and the life that needs to be told is his forte — all invaluable to the purpose of neverforget.cloud.
Azmi M. Anshar
SouthEast Asia Editor
Azmi Anshar’s four-decade long journalistic career began, sort of, in 1981 when he was about to discard a newspaper that had been wrapped around the humble but sumptuous nasi lemak — the quintessential Malaysian staple — while on break from his work at a construction site.
The wrapper was a page out of The Star, a then fledgling national daily punching above its weight class. In it, was an obscure house ad clamouring for reporters, anyone with English writing skills, an inquisitive mind, propensity for long working hours and, it wasn’t stated then, easy with low wages. He wrote in, was surprised to be interviewed, and even more surprised to be hired.
A year later, The Star packed him off to Kota Baru in the country’s northeastern Kelantan state and Azmi went, equipped with a bag of clothes, typewriter and plenty of chutzpah, soaking in the exotic east coast social and epicurean culture, bitterly robust partisan politics and feverish soccer scene.
Four years later, he found himself at the rival New Straits Times Press Group, first as labor beat reporter, then assistant news editor before the more interesting role of resident jazz/rock critic. In 1997, during a three-month fellowship at the Wolfson College in Cambridge, he produced a dissertation entitled “Death of a Newspaper”, that talked of the decimation of the newspaper trade by the world wide web — a prescient call that materialized more than a decade later with the ubiquity of Steve Jobs’ Iphones and Ipads.
Azmi called it a day himself with the print trade in 2014, and has been a free agent of media since. Of all his traits, wit is his forte, a powerful tool he uses sensitively to illuminate the bittersweet cycles of life. It’s a quality that endears him greatly to neverforget.cloud.
Jae Hur
Korea/Japan Editor
There are many who cut their teeth in journalism after doing other stuff. Our Korea/Japan Editor Jae Hur is one.
Jae started his career as a commodities broker and trader in 1988, becoming Samsung Futures’ Chicago-based fund manager at one point, before joining world news service Reuters in 1996. He served Reuters in his home city of Seoul, with stints in Tokyo, London and Singapore over a span of more than 10 years.
In 2006, Jae moved over to Bloomberg, serving the world’s premier news outlet for financial terminals in Tokyo and Singapore for another eight years. He has since been involved with other financial media as a writer, as well as business manager.
Fluent in English, Japanese and Korean, Jae leads the Far East content development for neverforget.cloud.
A savvy analyst and journalist, Jae brings an important skill set to our team, helping chart both client interaction as well as editorial progress.
Ikuko Kurahone
U.K. Author
London-based Ikuko has been writing in her mind stories about the people in her numbers-oriented world of financial journalism, long before coming to neverforget.cloud.
A Japanese-English bilingual writer with a multi-cultural background, she is a good listener with an ability to quickly grasp multiple socio-cultural aspects. Ikuko completed degrees in Keio University in Tokyo and University of California in L.A.
After stints as a translator at Softbank and Bloomberg, she joined Reuters, working as a correspondent, first in Tokyo and then London, for a total of about nine years where she covered markets, industries and corporates.
Having ventured into other businesses since, Ikuko remains a storyteller at heart and one neverforget.cloud is proud to be associated with.
Jag Dhaliwall
Marketing Strategist, Asia
Jag joined Bloomberg News in the late 1990s and made his name breaking some of the biggest M&A and corporate finance stories across Asia.
Over a 12-year reporting stint that stretched from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore and Tokyo, Jag cultivated a broad network of private equity executives, investment bankers and traders.
That helped him transition into his present role, as managing director of Singapore-based Principle Partners, an executive search firm that he co-founded in 2009 to specialize in the talent hunt for professionals in financial services and emerging technologies.
As neverforget.cloud’s marketing strategist for Asia, Jag brings his wealth of experience across South East Asia and rolodex of angel investors and clients from Hong Kong to Indonesia, covering private equity and focused on mega- to pan-Asia- and South East Asia-focused funds.
Jag, who graduated from RMIT University in Australia, is a die-hard Tottenham Hotspur fan who escapes from Asia twice a year to explore the footballing wonders in Barcelona to Rio to Amsterdam.
Neetha Sellaiah-Krishnan
Business Development Manager, Americas
Neetha started her working life in the world of pharma before branching out to various enterprises.
Joining Swiss drug giant Novartis as a Malaysian marketer in the late 1990s — a stint she wittingly refers to as “my drug-pusher days, the legit kind, you know” — she has ventured since into public relations, event management and fashion.
A go-getter who believes in yanking up her sleeves and doing as much as the guys — “more ok, I do more” — Neetha brings invaluable energy and passion to the core ideals of neverforget.cloud