Why the most valuable insights from Asia experts do not come from search results

There is a dangerous assumption in modern due diligence: that if an expert isn’t online, they don’t exist.

In Asia, the opposite is true. While the West lives on LinkedIn, Asia experts, from rural supply chains to family-owned conglomerates, often operate entirely offline. Relying on search results doesn’t give you the full market. It will just give you the most visible fraction of it.

Why Traditional Search Fails in Asia

When global consulting and investment teams think about Asia, there’s often one assumption: “With so many people online, finding experts here should be simple.”

But Asia doesn’t behave like the U.S. More LinkedIn profiles do not mean easier access to real operators. And this is where teams lose the most time and the most accuracy.

Imagine you need to map a poultry supply chain in rural Thailand. The person with the answer isn’t a market analyst in Bangkok. It’s a farm manager in a rural province.

Say, the most critical insights in sectors like manufacturing, energy, and healthcare are often held by professionals who have no digital footprint. 

They are too busy doing the work to post about it.

Relying on traditional method means you miss these local industry experts entirely. 

If your search parameters are limited to English keywords and digital profiles, you are effectively filtering out 80% of the market in emerging economies.

What We Provide at Arches: Beyond the Translator

There is a distinct difference between an “English-speaking observer” and a “local operator.” 

The former is easy to find but often offers theoretical knowledge. The latter runs the factory floor but may only speak the local dialect.

At Arches, we believe that just matching “keywords” isn’t enough. We operate like an executive search firm for every single project.

Our multinational teams across APAC, from Ho Chi Minh City, Tokyo, Shanghai, to Seoul, recruit local industry experts directly in their native languages, and manually by calling through industry guilds, alumni associations, and offline networks to find the voices that algorithms miss, even those from niche markets.

→ Find A Service That Matches Your Needs

What It Means for Decision Makers

This is the new standard for how expert networks work. It combines the safety of U.S.-level compliance protocols with the deep access of a local investigation

• Manual, real-time sourcing in local languages
• Recruiters across 15+ nationalities
• Deep tapping into rural, regulatory, and informal networks
• On-the-ground understanding of APAC market behavior
• Compliance-first screening aligned with regional requirements

If your Asia expert isn’t on Google, Arches can still find them

Whether you’re validating a Singapore go-to-market plan, testing a Japan expansion, or mapping supply chains across Vietnam and Thailand, Arches connects you directly with the voices that know what’s really happening.

When your next project needs highly specific, hard-to-find expertise, our APAC custom recruitment engine is built to deliver fast, accurate, and compliant.

Curious how we source the same way in the U.S.?

→ Check out Expert Network Insights: How to Find U.S. Industry Experts

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