The Green Room | Fintech Journeys in Asia

In this episode, I speak with Kunal Goel, co-founder of PowerCred, which provides alternative data APIs for the MSME market, giving third party lenders real-time access to MSME business data to improve underwriting. Alternative data has been common in consumer credit in emerging markets for years, but the ability to access SME and microSME data from e-commerce, bank, and even utility sources is quite new.

Before PowerCred, Kunal played a major role in launching and scaling the business operations of Indian fintech Kuliza in Southeast Asia. He founded PowerCred in December of 2021, so it’s quite a young startup. But PowerCred is already on a roll launching partnerships in Indonesia and in process of raising their first round. You can learn more about them by visting powercred.io.

In this episode, I speak with Lan Doan, CEO of TAPTAP, which provides loyalty and rewards programs to consumers in Vietnam.

Lan grew up in Hanoi and then studied and worked in the US, including getting her MBA from Harvard Business School. Seeing the economic potential of Vietnam after graduation, Lan decided to come back to Vietnam to actually be a part of that growth. After a few years in management consulting, Lan volunteered to work on a business case for TAPTAP and became CEO of the entity when it was officially founded in November of 2020.

TAPTAP is joint venture between Vietnam Investments Group and UOB, United Overseas Bank. You can learn more about them by visiting taptap.com.vn.

In this episode, I speak with Aaron Collett, Senior Credit Manager at Goldfinch, a decentralized credit protocol that connects investors and fintechs in emerging markets to provide stablecoin based credit.

Aaron grew up in Indonesia but has worked all over the world, including Singapore, Hong Kong, London, and New York, on various areas of structured financing. Aaron led Asia Origination at Lendable until last October, and then he made the jump to web3 by joining Goldfinch in New York.

Goldfinch is a marketplace that connects crypto stablecoin holders with emerging market fintechs that typically seek debt to fund their balance sheets in the real economy. Goldfinch was founded in July of 2021 and raised $25M from a16z’s crypto arm earlier this year in January. And in case you were wondering, all of Goldfinch’s loans are denominated in USDC, so they have been relatively shielded from all of the Terra/Luna drama. You can learn more about them by visting goldfinch.finance.

In this episode, I speak with Windy Natriavi, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of AwanTunai, which provides supply chain and financial services to micro-merchants in Indonesia. Windy is also the founder of WomenWorks, a “connectivity” marketplace that supports women’s network-building in Indonesia. Windy was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 for Finance and Venture Capital in Asia in 2019 and spent her early career as a consultant at McKinsey.

AwanTunai was founded in October of 2017 and raised their most recent round in December of 2021. You can learn more about them by visting awantunai.co.id.

In this episode, I speak with Luis Buenaventura, Philippines country manager for Yield Guild Games, or YGG, which is a play-to-earn gaming guild, giving metaverse players opportunities to earn in blockchain-based currency.

Luis has also been a pioneer of web3 in the Philippines. He has founded several businesses, including syndeo media, Infinite.ly, Rebit.ph, and most recently, the BloomX cryptocurrency exchange. Luis is an NFT artist, founder of the Cryptopop Art Guild, which supports underprivileged Filipino artists, author of two books on cryptocurrencies, and has been a contributing writer to Rappler and Bitsonline.

Lastly, I’ve been following Luis’ weekly newsletter, Cryptotoday for quite a few months now and can say that I have personally learned so much from his thoughtful analysis and takes, and I’m sure you will too.

YGG is a decentralized autonomous organization or DAO that helps scholars access play to earn games like Axie Infinity. YGG was founded in 2020. They raised 12.5M in a token sale in July of 2021 and raised another 4.6M from Andreesen Horowitz in August of 2021. You can learn more about them by visting yieldguild.io.

Welcome to the Green Room, a podcast where we go behind the scenes with fintech entrepreneurs and thought leaders about their careers, impact, and industry insights. I'm your host, Amrita Vir.

In season 3 of the Green Room, we’ve expanded our scope beyond Southeast Asia to all of ASEAN and will spend some time going down the web3 rabbit hole with play to earn startups, NFT projects, and stablecoins. But don’t worry, we’ll still cover some web2 topics like SME lending and payment rewards. We also had International Women’s Day in March, and I realized that as a woman podcaster, I need to get more women on the show.

So thanks for listening the Green Room Fintech Podcast. If you know anyone who would be a great guest, particularly awesome women founders, reach out to us at [email protected]. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy season 3. Happy listening!

In this final episode of Season 2 of The Green Room podcast, we’re going to be talking about green finance with those involved in this year’s Global Fintech Hackcelerator.

For those not familiar, the Global Fintech Hackcelerator is a hackathon that happens in the lead up to Singapore Fintech Fest every year. If you listened to our episode with Pat Patel from Elevandi where we went behind the scenes of Singapore Fintech Fest, one of the highlights that he mentioned was the Hackcelerator. The theme of this year’s Hackcelerator was “Harnessing Technology to Power Green Finance.” 3 winners were announced during the festival - out of 20 finalists and nearly 500 submissions.

Today, I’ll be speaking with Tek Yew Chia, Vice Chairman of Oliver Wyman about OW’s role in organizing the Hackcelerator and how they view the sustainable finance ecosystem in Asia.

We also have Puneet Chaddha, CEO of Global Initiatives and Advisor to RootAnt, who actually participated in the Hackcelerator. We’ll hear about his experience and the solution that the team came up with. Big congrats to Puneet and the team for being the Hackcelerator winner!

Oliver Wyman is a global management consulting firm, and they have been keen supporters of Singapore Fintech Fest and developing the Asian fintech ecosystem. You can learn more about them by visiting oliverwyman.com.

RootAnt builds digital infrastructure that enables neobanking in Asia, and Global Initiatives helps companies assess their sustainability footprints through reports and programs. You can learn more about them by visiting rootant.com and globalinitiatives.com.

Learn more about podcast host Amrita Vir at amritavir.com.

In this episode, I speak with Nirali Zaveri, co-founder and CEO of Friz, a fintech for freelance workers. Nirali, who previously worked at Mastercard, talks about starting Friz after realizing that freelance workers are completely undserved by banks due to their project-based income. We talk about Friz’s word of mouth go-to-market strategy across Southeast Asia, and Nirali tells me about “the human cloud of the future” and her new year’s resolutions.

Friz provides financial services, including debit cards, credit cards, and invoice financing to freelance workers on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. Friz was founded in February of 2020. They raised their seed round in September of 2021 and were part of Y-Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch. You can learn more about them by visting usefriz.com.

Learn more about podcast host Amrita Vir at amritavir.com.

In this episode, I speak with Abhishek Chatterjee, Founder and CEO of Tookitaki, a regtech startup that is focused on delivering a full suite of machine learning-based compliance solutions to banks and fintechs who are vulnerable to financial crime and increasingly subject to strict compliance regulation. Abhishek talks about the fact that only 1% of laundered money is recovered every year, how Tookitaki's culture is rooted in their purpose of fighting financial crime, and the differences in Western and emerging market regtech. Abhishek started Tookitaki in 2014 and now has offices in Singapore, India, London, and the US. You can learn more about them by visiting tookitaki.ai.

Learn more about podcast host Amrita Vir at amritavir.com.

This week, we have a special Green Room episode for you. We are going behind the scenes of this year's Singapore Fintech Festival with Pat Patel, General Manager of Elevandi, the Singapore Fintech Festival's new parent company.

We also have a discount code for those of you who still haven't gotten your SFF tickets. Use The Green Room's promo code GREENROOM50 at the SFF checkout page to get 50% off your ticket, but move fast because this code is only valid for the first 50 users.

The Singapore Fintech Festival begins on November 8th and runs through November 12th. The first three days of the festival will feature a conference and exhibition, and on the last two days, participants can attend global satellite and industry events online and at physical locations. These include the World Fintech Festival, Innovation Lab Crawl, and Masterclass series by Oxygen by APIX, one of The Green Room's sponsors.

Singapore Fintech Festival has been around since 2016 and is gearing up to host 60,000 people this year. SFF's new parent company, Elevandi was formed in August of 2021 and just named its Board of Directors. You can find more information on Singapore Fintech Festival and Elevandi by visiting fintechfestival.sg.

Learn more about podcast host Amrita Vir at amritavir.com.