Public record

Prem Bhatia
Co-founder & CEO, Graas

Prem Bhatia is co-founder and CEO of Graas, a Singapore-based retail commerce AI company. He has worked in advertising, media and technology for thirty years across the US, UK, India, the UAE, Singapore and Southeast Asia — beginning as a sports agent at WorldTel, later as president of July Systems, and as co-founder of PHAR Partnerships.

He is the grandson of the journalist, editor and diplomat Prem Bhatia (1922–1995), in whose name the Editors Guild of India administers the Prem Bhatia Journalism Awards.

See Coverage · Interview · Essay

Press

Coverage

Selected press, 2010–2026, newest first. Bylined pieces are his argument; interviews and keynotes are his words in someone else’s format; the rest are third-party write-ups.

Date Publication Article
Sep 2026 DealStreetAsiaAnalysis AI is rewriting build-versus-buy calculus, but Asia’s dealmaking has yet to catch up — Graas co-founder Prem Bhatia on why “the days of building in 18 months” are over
Aug 2026 Tech TimesAnalysis Why Graas paired the $17M raise with the Trustana acquisition — unifying retail data into one Commerce Knowledge Graph
Aug 2026 TNGlobalNews $17M Series B led by LemmaTree (Temasek), plus the acquisition of product-data startup Trustana
Dec 2025 AWS StartupsCase study How Graas built Agent Foundry on AWS — including agents that turn handwritten pharmacy order lists into structured orders
Aug 2025 TechNode GlobalNews $9M pre-Series B to launch Agent Foundry, with five agents for e-commerce automation — Hoppr, Cartlyst, Chattr, Turbo, Extract
Mar 2024 YourStoryBylined How e-commerce brands can balance customer trust with data-driven insight under GDPR, PDPA and DPDP
May 2023 YourStoryBylined How prescriptive analytics helps e-commerce brands move from dashboards to decisions
Apr 2023 DBS Kopi TimeInterview On the convergence of commerce and advertising, AI as the next mega trend, and venture capital in Southeast Asia — full transcriptListen on Spotify
Sep 2022 YourStoryKeynote Keynote on growing e-commerce with connected data across Mumbai to Manila — and why marketplaces earn more from advertising than from selling
May 2017 adobo magazineInterview Building commercial blueprint for infrastructure projects
Jul 2016 Digital News AsiaNews PHAR and AirAsia launch Southeast Asia’s largest publisher-side trading desk
2013 MintFeature “Superbrand: Sachin Tendulkar”
May 2010 The Economic TimesNews Coverage of July Systems

“Could we have built it? Yes. But agentic is moving too quickly to waste time.”

Prem Bhatia, on acquiring Trustana rather than building — DealStreetAsia, “Graas raises $17m Series B, eyes first profitable quarter in Q4”, 13 August 2026 (paywalled).

“Graas maps all of that into one ontology and the agents run on that very map.”

Prem Bhatia, on the knowledge graph behind the agents — DealStreetAsia, same article.

DealStreetAsia reports the round was led by LemmaTree, founded by Temasek, with Integra Partners, Tin Men Capital, The Xander Group, InCred Wealth and Orzon participating. Tech in Asia, “Graas raises $17m, buys Trustana in agentic commerce push” (13 August 2026, paywalled), reports Graas revenue growing more than 50% year on year.

Interview

DBS Kopi Time E098

DBS Kopi Time podcast with Taimur Baig, Episode 98 — Prem Bhatia, Co-Founder, Graas

Prem Bhatia on shifting sands in the tech start-up scene

“If you have the data, if you sit on the data, you can command advertising dollars. It’s as simple as that, because you can prove purchase.”

On AI, e-commerce and venture capital in Southeast Asia — in conversation with Taimur Baig, Chief Economist, DBS Group Research. Recorded 6 April 2023.

Read the full transcript → · Listen on Spotify

Essay

Three times the ground moved

By Prem Bhatia

Thirty years, one job: find where attention is about to move, get there before it is obvious.

2000 Commercial cricket Rights stopped being a cost. They became the asset. 2010 Five OSes, one screen The interface was a missed call — not an app. 2020 Commerce, ads, retail collapse Prove the line between attention and the sale.
Read the full essay ~6 min