The OKE Club July Networking event at the Oriental Club

The front entrance of the only Private Member's Club in Marleybone with a focus on the Orient. 

The OKE Club is excited to announce that its next networking event will be held at the prestigious Oriental Club on the 16th of July. This event will be a drink networking event with a speech, canapes and live musical performances as we usually have. 

Guests from our previous OKEClub event with best-selling author, Simon Alexander Ong at the Traveller's Club.

We are very honoured to have Mr Chris Forbes and Julie Chen, the founders of Cheeky Panda to join us as keynote speakers at this networking event. The two co-founders also represent the spirit of the OKEClub which is the bringing together of entrepreneurs from the East and West to create innovative, new business ideas. 

Mr Chris Forbes and Miss Julie Chen, founders of the innovative start-up Cheeky Panda.

Cheeky Panda is valued at a quarter of a billion pounds. It is ranked as sixth in the UK top 100 start-ups and also ranked as Sunday Times Fast Track 100 ones to watch. The Cheeky Cheeky Panda is a B corp producing a range of high quality sustainable, low carbon, naturally skin-friendly tissue products.

Cheeky Panda has been awarded a sustainability award by the Franco-British Business Awards 2020. 

The company has retail and B2B offering available in over 25 countries. The OKE Club is very excited about the presence of Chris and Julie as this is the first time that the OKE Club has invited entrepreneurs of amazing start-ups as our keynote speakers. We hope that their experiences on start-ups and attracting investors can help the aspiring entrepreneurs and professionals in the OKE Community. 

Chris Forbes, Cheeky Panda, co-founder receiving a Business Excellence Award.  

This event will be held at the prestigious Oriental Club, the only club in Marylebone. The Oriental Club treasures its rich history and the extraordinary characters who have been associated with it since the Duke of Wellington became the Club’s first and only President in 1824. 

Host: Victor Kovalets, Managing Director of the OKE Club

Victor Kovalets is founder of OKEClub which was started back 18 months ago at the height of the pandemic. He was interested in creating w Bridge between Chinese entrepreneurs and investors as well as international ones in the UK which is how OKEClub was born.
He also founded AcademiaOne back in 2019 which is an eductional technology company providing a platform to help students get their dream offers at schools and universities. Students can also recieve tutoring from a choice of 1000 PhD researchers, postdocs and lecturers from the UK's top schools and universities. AcademiaOne has helped more than 3000 students over the course of the company's history to receive school, undergraduate, Master's and PhD offers, tutoring, online courses, academic feedback and English language improvements.

Guest of Honour: Mr Charles Xue

Charles Xue Biqun (b. 1953), alias Xue Manzi, is a popular Chinese-American billionaire venture capitalist and angel investor with over 10 million followers on Weibo. He studied foreign relations at the University of California, Berkeley. His most famous deal to date is his US$250,000 investment in Unitech in the early 1990s, which later became UTStarcom. The company went public in 2000, reaching a post-IPO value of over US$5 billion. He was also chairman of 8848.com (the earliest Chinese e-commerce network). Xue has invested in many internet startups in China, including PCPOP, Autohome, Xueqiu, CreatyChina, Community001 and 265.com (bought by Google).

Guest of Honour: Amjad Suleman

Amjad Suleman has been associated with global investment banking and Fintech industry for over two decades and has held Senior Management positions with Citigroup, Mizuho International , Wachovia, Redddot Capital and with management consultancy firms such as Sclumberger and at present he is a Chief Business Officer of Dionysus Studio, a unique blockchain hollywood movie funding platform and additionally sits on various global corporate advisory boards.

Amjad is also an investor most recent investment

Uk Solar Water
Mythic Animation Studio

MEEK
unique social platform and networking ecosystem where students, entrepreneurs, mentors, and investors collaborate to bring new ideas and business ventures into reality.
Amjad is a co-founder of Faction Holding, an AI company and founder and Chief Business Officer of Dionysus.

Guest of Honour: Mr Balbir Judge

Balbir Judge is an angel investor, venture capitalist and also the CEO of UKstartupfunding.com. Balbir has extensive knowledge on event organisation, angel investment and raising capital for start-up. Balbir in recent year also became interested in the field of blockchain and NFTs. He has organised many high quality events in this area in recent months and is looking forward to organising more in the coming years.

Guest of Honour: His Excellency Mark Logan, MP for Bolton Northeast

Mr Mark Logan is serving as the MP for Bolton Northeast and also the Vice Chair of the Inter Party Parliamentary Group on China. Mark has formerly worked at the British Consulate General in Shanghai and has extensive knowledge on China-UK relationship and business opportunities.

Guest of Honour: Professor Yu Xiong

Prof. Xiong is Associate Dean International of Surrey University, this university wide role enables him to work with the university's three faculties and more than 20 schools/departments on international collaborations. Professor Xiong is founder and director of the newly established Surrey Centre for Innovation and Commercialization, where he brought in 1.5 million fund to facilitate the relevant activities in the university eco-system. 

Guest of Honour: Professor Birgitte Andersen

Professor Birgitte Andersen (PhD Economics) is CEO of Big Innovation Centre since 2011. During the internet boom, Birgitte launched and ran (2000-2010) probably UK’s biggest interdisciplinary postgraduate programmes on E-Commerce at Birkbeck, University of London (Birkbeck), where she gained her Professorship. She is called in by the media (e.g. BBC World, Al Jazeera, SKY, Bloomberg) and cited by the mainstream press (newspapers and tech-press as Forbes). Her work on IPRs, AI, and the digital and economy and innovation is published in academic journals and highlighted in government reports.

She has advised economists and policymakers of national governments (including UK Intellectual Property Office, Bank of England, Department of Industry, and Parliament) in and beyond Europe including OECD, UN and WIPO; and large firms, and serves as an expert defence witness in the UK courts on matters of IP use on the Internet. She was the Rapporteur for the EU Commission representing the EU Expert Group on Knowledge Transfer and Open Innovation and sat on the EU Expert Advisory Panel for Horizon 2020 - Societal Challenge: Europe in a Changing World – Inclusive, Innovative and Reflective Societies. Since October 2018, Birgitte is appointed to the Arab League Expert Group regarding the Digital Government Strategy for the Arab World.

Guest of Honour: Miss Gintare Geleziunaite

Miss Geleziunaite is working as the Head of Change Strategy at Department for International Trade. 


Guest of Honour: Mr Abbas Kazmi

Abbas Kazmi is a multi award winning serial entrepreneur and investor who founded his first of several companies at 16. Abbas has been chosen as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Standout, as a Maserati 100, as one of the Great British Entrepreneur Awards Entrepreneurs' Champions of the Year, and as one of startups.co.uk’s Young Entrepreneurs of the Year and Business Growth Enablers of the Year, to name just a few amongst many other awards. Abbas has been appointed as a United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Fellow, focussing on youth entrepreneurship and empowerment in MENA, and as a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. Ex-BlackRock working across EMEA and the US, Abbas co-founded both the Oxford Accelerator and VC fund Collegiate Capital, as well as being an advisor to and LP investor in several funds in Europe. Recently he was recognised and selected by the Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, as an Arab Youth Pioneer. An academic scholar both at Westminster School and Oxford University and a VC Fellow at London Business School’s Newton Venture Program, Abbas is Chairman of the illustrious Oxford Guild, which he has built into the largest university society in the world and where he has hosted a wide range of high profile guests from multiple major CEOs, Founders and Nobel Prize winners, to the likes of Kanye West, Woody Harrelson and many more. Abbas has long been a big supporter of the Creative Industries and in addition to being an artist and collector, is a producer 3 Hollywood films so far, working alongside the likes of Idris Elba. He is also co-founder of the All In startup diversity pledge and of the Spirited Network Covid-19 relief non-profit that is now also helping tackle the medical supplies shortage in Ukraine and other conflict zones. Passionate about the power of emerging technologies and supporting budding entrepreneurs and ecosystems, Abbas has recently joined the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the metaverse and Web 3.0 as a co-founding board member. Abbas regularly judges leading start-up competitions such as MIT Innovators Under 35 and enjoys speaking at top universities and conferences globally such as the World Economic Forum Annual Summit at Davos, Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit and Milken Institute MENA Summit.

Guest of Honour: Mr Hassan Alamari

Mr Alamari is an official Saudi Arabian representative of the government at the embassy in London. He is the Head of Economics focusing on all matters related to economics in relation to the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London. Mr Alamri holds one of the most senior positions at the embassy in London. Finally, he has had a long career in government serving the Saudi Arabian state in various capacities. His experience in Saudi Arabian-British international matters is diverse.

Guest of Honour: Mr Alexander Amartei

Alexander Amartei is the producer of 'Antara', a Hollywood epic that is the first major movie in history to be funded via NFTs. The Antara Movie NFT by Arabian Camels has ushered in a new paradigm shift that is setting a whole new culture in the world of Hollywood, finance, NFTs and DeFi.

Guest of Honour: Professor Zhanfeng Cui

Prof. Cui is the Donald Pollock Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Oxford since the Chair was established in 2000. He is the Founding Director of the Oxford Centre for Tissue Engineering and Bioprocessing, and Founding Director of the Oxford Suzhou Centre for Advanced Research (OSCAR). He was educated in China (BSc, Inner Mongolia Polytechnic University, MSc and PhD from Dalian University of Technology). After a postdoc in Strathclyde University, he became a lecturer in Edinburgh University in 1991, moved to Oxford in 1994 as a University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in Keble College. He was elected to the first Chemical Engineering Chair in 2000 and moved to Hertford College as a Professorial Fellow. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (FIChemE) and a Fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (FAIMBE). He was awarded the ‘Doctor of Science’ by the University of Oxford in 2009 and elected to a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2013.

Guest of Honour: Mr Gaddo Gaddini

Mr Gaddo Cardini with the King of Bahrain Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa

Gaddo Cardini is the CEO of and major shareholder of Heaven Energy, a Swiss based company involved in private banking that sells and buys aircraft and helicopters, his business interests extend worldwide and he has pursued important contracts in South and North America and Canada, South Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Far East. The company, with its headquarters in Lausanne, has acted as a consultant in the marketing, promotion and sales of both Guffstream and Bombardier aircraft among other business ventures. These services have bought a turnover of more than 51 billion over the last 10 years.

Guest of Honour: Mr Martin Ma

Martin Ma is the co-founder and Managing Director of Jinli Restaurant. Jinli Restaurant started its business in 2015. The name of 'Jinli' originally come after the famous gastronomy street in Chengdu, Sichuan. Jinli restaurant has revolutionised Sichuan food in London and has been appreciated by its customers since opening. Jinli has also recognised by a number of media outlets and have won various awards.

Guest of Honour: Yuge Wang

Yü-Ge is a Client Advisor at the International Fine Art Auction House Christie’s and the auction house’s first and only Asian auctioneer in the West in the company’s 256 year history.
Yü-Ge was born in China, grew up in Germany and is living in London, UK since 2013. Having studied and worked in China, Germany and England, she has a deep understanding of Asian and Western cultures and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, German and English. Since joining Christie’s in 2013 she has contributed to the success of Post-War and Contemporary Art Department, including the Sale of the world’s most expensive artwork sold at auction – Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi and has been a leading figure for Christie’s Europe in cultivating and fostering existing and new Asian clients.

Guest of Honour: Beibei Wu

Miss Beibei Wu is working as the China Business Development Officer for Cartier. Miss Wu has extensive experience in fashion and luxury industry. She has formerly worked for prestigious luxury companies such as Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren and also the Harrods. Miss Wu has amazing knowledge on the fashion and luxury industry and is enthusiastic about establishing contact and cooperation with people from other industries.

Musician: Sid Sheng

Sid graduated from Goldsmiths University of London and UCL in music. He specialised in classic, pop, rock, folk, electronic and experimental music. Sid had many styles of music performances, mainly in London and cities in the UK around 2015. His most recent appearance was at the 2022 London Fashion Week as a composer, performer and producer.

Musician: Brianna Tang

Brianna is an American pianist with 18 years of experience. Her music education is from the prestigious Royal Academy of Music. Next year she is preparing to undertake a PhD in music. Brianna has performed at more than 70 events including events with member's of a royal family and high level government officials.

The elegant staircase at the Oriental Club 

The Oriental Club was founded by returning officers from India and the East for whom the Club was a valued haven in London. Major General Sir John Malcolm coordinated the founding Committee in 1824 and advertised a Club that would draw its Members from ‘Noblemen and gentlemen associated with the administration of our Eastern empire, or who have travelled or resided in Asia, at St. Helena, in Egypt, at the Cape of Good Hope, the Mauritius, or at Constantinople.’

The upstairs drawing room in the Oriental Club where part of our next event will take place.

This historical and prestigious venue will create a warm and amazing atmosphere for our members and guests of honour to interact and network with each other. This July networking event will attract over 100 talented entrepreneurs and professionals from different sectors and industries. We hope our members will receive enjoy great hospitality and make valuable connections at this high-quality event. We can’t wait to welcome you all at the OKE Club July Networking event at the Oriental Club soon!

Victor Kovalets, Founder and Managing Director of the OKE Club with distinguished guests at the OKE Club April Networking Event.

Refund Policy

Please note that all ticket sales are final. We are not able to provide refunds as we send a list of our guests to the venue when tickets are purchased. Therefore, please make sure you are able to attend before purchasing a ticket.