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ByNN Desk
Arbind Lochan Joins Singapore Airlines as VP of AI and Data
Singapore Airlines has appointed Arbind Lochan as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence and Data, a move that brings more than two decades of data science and AI leadership from across Southeast Asia's technology sector into one of the world's most recognized airlines.
Lochan steps into the role after a stint as Fractional Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Flow, capping a year that also saw him complete a doctorate in AI.
Singapore Airlines has appointed Arbind Lochan as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence and Data, a move that brings more than two decades of data science and AI leadership from across Southeast Asia’s technology sector into one of the world’s most recognized airlines.
Lochan took on the role in June 2026 after most recently serving as Fractional Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Flow, where he worked with financial services clients on data and AI maturity, an enterprise personalization blueprint and an AI governance policy.
In his new position, he will lead Singapore Airlines’ AI, data science, analytics and data engineering organization, with responsibility spanning agentic AI, machine learning operations at scale, optimization and business intelligence functions the airline considers mission critical.
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Lochan spent more than seven years at Grab, where he led data science and AI initiatives for the company’s growth business across Southeast Asia. As Regional Head of Data Science and Capabilities for Growth, he built systems including a Next Best Action framework that coordinated more than two dozen machine learning models and led work on agentic and generative AI applications for customer engagement. Before Grab, he held marketing analytics leadership roles at Uber and PayPal across the Asia-Pacific region.
In 2026, Lochan completed a Doctor of Business Administration in artificial intelligence at Golden Gate University, where he developed MOSAIC, a framework for agentic AI personalization drawn from his industry experience.
Speaking with NervNow, Lochan shared perspective he has offered previously in public forums, including in a LinkedIn post last year, on where he sees the industry heading.
On the shift toward agentic AI and how it changes value creation, Lochan said:
“We are moving rapidly from an era of passive data consumption to a world of autonomous, agentic systems. The true shift in customer lifetime value won’t come from just predicting the next best action, but from building AI agents that genuinely understand context and intent before hyper-personalization.”
On the balance between technical precision and human context in AI system design, he said, “True innovation in AI doesn’t lie in precision alone; it lies in wisdom and context. When we design intelligent platforms, we must ensure that scaling technology doesn’t mean losing the human nuance behind the data. The best food recommendation model works when someone is hungry.”
Lochan’s appointment adds to a growing list of senior AI leadership moves across the region’s travel and technology sectors this year.
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