Isaac Ng, associate head of investment at MTR Lab, is one of our top 50 Emerging Leaders in corporate venturing for 2026.
Most corporate VCs can talk about what they do, but few can describe it as succinctly as Isaac Ng, who likes to refer to his work as “investing in exciting technologies in boring industries”.
Ng is associate head of investment at MTR Lab, the technology investment arm of Japanese mass transit operator MTR, but his brief goes far beyond transport, leading investments in climate technology and the built environment, as well as mobility. It is a far cry from his first corporate role.
“I started my career in a corporate – in a management programme actually. But I did it for two years and I was so bored that I thought ‘corporate is not for me’,” he says.
Ng opted for the startup world instead, founding user experience startup VentureBeans in his mid-twenties. While it did not stick, it proved to be an invaluable experience. That exposure to startups led Ng to set up a family office, before he co-founded used car marketplace Beyond Cars as CFO. It was that blend of experiences that took him back to the corporate world, this time on the innovation side.
“It is about how we can help our parent company. Whether it is culture change, introducing new technologies, new ways of working or new ways of thinking to the executives who sit on our investment committee”
“I like doing venture, but I am also a builder,” he says. “I like building things from scratch. And MTR is really a company that makes Hong Kong work.”
More than 50% of travel in Hong Kong is done on MTR networks and it is also heavily involved in property development, building housing and offices above metro stations. Ng says MTR is one of the rare companies where everyone genuinely feels they are contributing to society. And he takes pride in contributing to the big picture.
“On top of making money, it is about how we can help our parent company,” he says. “Whether it is culture change, introducing new technologies, new ways of working or new ways of thinking to the executives who sit on our investment committee, these are all very important.”
The Emerging Leaders are mid-career corporate venture professionals who are making an outstanding contribution to their teams and the industry.
See the full list of Emerging Leaders here.
