A scion of Malaysia’s richest family, Kuok Meng Ru transformed his love of classic rock and blues into a music empire. Looking ahead, his music production app BandLab aims to help everyone create songs for free.
Kuok Meng Ru, founder and CEO of Caldecott Music Group, believes AI-generated instrumentals are one component to “empowering and democratizing” the music industry. “Today, you can legitimately just hit a button, and go through many different ideas of what could be the right backing track for you,” says Meng Ru, in an interview on the sidelines of the Forbes Global CEO conference. “I think that’s one of the beauties of the new trends in music.”
The son of palm oil billionaire Kuok Khoon Hong – and grand-nephew of Malaysia’s richest man, Robert Kuok – Meng Ru, 34, founded Singapore-based Caldecott Music Group in 2021. The group spans BandLab Technologies, media company NME Networks and musical instruments group Vista Musical Instruments. BandLab Technologies’ flagship company is BandLab, a music production app and website that doubles as a social network for creators.
In 2021, BandLab raised $65 million in a Series B funding round that valued the startup at $315 million. Led by Cercano Management, the multi-billion-dollar investment arm of former Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist Paul Allen, the round included participation from Meng Ru’s cousin Kuok Meng Xiong’s K3 Ventures, which was an early backer of superapp Grab and tech giant Bytedance.
BandLab’s computer interface.
Courtesy of BandLab
“When you think about BandLab as a platform, the easiest analogy is Google Docs to Microsoft Word, or Sheets to Excel,” says Meng Ru, who cofounded the startup in 2015 and remains its CEO. Users can invite others to work on their projects, either individually or in real-time ‘Live Sessions.’ The young founder credits BandLab’s “extremely strong” growth to its sharing tools: the company reached 60 million registered users in…