In this episode, we continue our conversation with Paul Schulte from the previous episode, a veteran equity researcher in the financial services industry. He's also a government policy advisor and a prolific author. His latest book is “The Digital Transformation of Property in Greater China". For the past few episodes we've been having founders and investors on the show and he's going to be our first guest who is more on the research side, but has had a really wide and deep scope in terms of looking at markets, looking at technology, and everything that's been happening at least in the last 30 years. This episode in particular covers Paul's thoughts on fintech regulation, driving blockchain adoption, proptech, and some more personal questions in the Rapid Fire Round. 

Transcript

Timestamps

00:29 Paul Schulte intro;

01:53 Regulation in the US and China vs Southeast Asia;

04:09 Banking Innovation in Southeast Asia;

05:25 Creating Fintech Super Agencies;

09:46 Gaps in the BSN;

10:32 Property as go-to-market for next wave of fintech;

12:27 Rapid Fire Round;

About our guest

For the past 30 years, Paul Schulte has worked in global equity or bond research in emerging markets. And more recently he has been working with some of the largest sovereign pension, mutual, and hedge funds globally as founder and editor of Schulte Research. So they provide research on banks, financial technology, and bank and credit algorithms. He's also authored three books on fintech and digitalization in China. The newest one was published just this year. So congratulations Paul on that one, the digital transformation of property in greater China, which we'll be talking about in this podcast. So he has also taught nearly two decades of MBA and graduate programs from Tufts University to HKUST, to Zhejiang University in China, and is a regular source for publications like Wall Street, New York Times, Financial Times, and The Economist. He's also served as an advisor to financial institutions across Southeast Asia, including the Thailand SEC, Indonesia's OJK, and Bank Indonesia.   

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Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

In this episode we have with us Paul Schulte, a veteran equity researcher in the financial services industry. He's also a government policy advisor and a prolific author. His latest book is “The Digital Transformation of Property in Greater China". For the past few episodes we've been having founders and investors on the show and he's going to be our first guest who is more on the research side, but has had a really wide and deep scope in terms of looking at markets, looking at technology, and everything that's been happening at least in the last 30 years. This episode in particular covers Paul's book and his thoughts on fintech in Southeast Asia and the impact of US-China tensions on tech in Southeast Asia. To catch the next part of our conversation, check it out here. 

Transcript

Timestamps

00:29 Paul Schulte intro;

01:57 Why Paul Schulte’s latest book on fintech is about proptech;

04:22 Formulas of yesterday and formulas of tomorrow for fintech;

05:21 Why the book focuses on China’s tech ecosystem;

07:46 An era of financial services consolidation in Southeast Asia

11:21 The unbanked challenge and finding the Linklogis of Southeast Asia;

13:45 US-China tensions and China’s lead on edge technology;

15:47 Impact of China lead on edge tech on Southeast Asia;

About our guest

For the past 30 years, Paul Schulte has worked in global equity or bond research in emerging markets. And more recently he has been working with some of the largest sovereign pension, mutual, and hedge funds globally as founder and editor of Schulte Research. So they provide research on banks, financial technology, and bank and credit algorithms. He's also authored three books on fintech and digitalization in China. The newest one was published just this year. So congratulations Paul on that one, the digital transformation of property in greater China, which we'll be talking about in this podcast. So he has also taught nearly two decades of MBA and graduate programs from Tufts University to HKUST, to Zhejiang University in China, and is a regular source for publications like Wall Street, New York Times, Financial Times, and The Economist. He's also served as an advisor to financial institutions across Southeast Asia, including the Thailand SEC, Indonesia's OJK, and Bank Indonesia. 

Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

In this episode we have on-call Hasbi Asyadiq, founder and CEO of Assemblr, an Indonesian augmented reality platform with a global user base, one of the leaders in this space in Southeast Asia, and also often called the Canva for augmented reality in Southeast Asia. So we've invited Hasbi today to go on call with us as Assemblr is just fresh off the Techstars program. And we wanted to learn more about their experience in this globally renowned accelerator and also for them to share with our listeners about the company and the moves that they have been making in the augmented reality and education space in the past four years.

Transcript

Timestamps

01:30 Introducing Assemblr;

03:04 All about Hasbi's Techstars experience;

05:14 Advice on how to get into Techstars;

06:25 Role of Techstars and Facebook Accelerator in growth of Assemblr;

08:05 Introducing Assembler's ecosystem;

11:00 How Assembler adoption has changed during the pandemic;

13:19 Exploring use cases for AR in Indonesia beyond education;

15:23 Working with corporations and big companies to drive AR adoption;

17:25 Case Studies working with one of Indonesia's big banks and Ducati;

19:08 Future of Assemblr in the next 5 years;

20:00 Hasbi's Rapid Fire Round;

About our guest

Hasbi Asyadiq is the founder and CEO of Assemblr. Prior to Assemblr, he was co-founder and CTO of Octagon Studio, a tech startup specializing in AR and VR products and solutions. He is currently an alumnus of the Techstars Program, having joined it this year, and an alumnus of the Facebook Accelerator program in Singapore from the 2020 cohort. He has had a decade experience engineering and designing 3D, AR, and VR solutions and applications, hence his deep involvement in the space in Indonesia. 

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Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

In this episode, we have on call with us Adrit Raha, co-CEO and co-founder of Symbo Insurance, Singapore-based platform offering digital, market-ready solutions for Southeast Asia and India’s insurance providers, brands, affinity and end customers. Following Symbo’s Series A and acquisition of digital healthcare solutions platform Vivant -- where Adrit is CEO -- we’ve invited him to come on the show to talk more about digitalization in the insurance industry in Southeast Asia, especially from the incumbents or traditional players’ point-of-view. This Zoom call was recorded April 14th, 2021. 

Transcript

Timestamps

01:17 Introduction to Symbo;

01:52 Behind the acquisition of healthcare platform enabler Vivant;

02:59 Working with insurers beyond healthcare;

04:10 Insurance-as-a-service;

05:59 Point-of-need micro-insurance distribution;

07:09 Enabling traditional players to break into micro-insurance;

08:21 The benefits of operating both in India and Southeast Asia;

09:37 Symbo playbook for enabling insurance-as-a-service;

11:33 End-customer response to point-of-need distribution and future of attachment approach to insurance;

14:06 API integration enabling seamless, no-touch user experience;

15:26 Future of Symbo;

17:53 Adrit's Rapid Fire Round;

About our guest

Adrit Raha is co-CEO and co-founder of Symbo Insurance. He was also CEO of Vivant, which was acquired by Symbo, a fellow AJ Capital incubatee. Prior to leading Symbo and Vivant, Adrit has had more than a decade of experience working at leadership positions with leading global insurance organizations AIG and RSA and financial institutions like Wells Fargo Financial. He completed his Bachelors in Arts at Knox College and received his MBA from the University of Strathclyde.

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Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

Back in March we set up our first Clubhouse session with founder-CEOs from three of our portfolio companies that experienced a huge boost in growth over 2020 and talked to them about how they plan on sustaining that growth this year. We got a lot of great insights and we’re sharing them on this episode. So in this episode, we have Giacomo Ficari, CEO of Lifepal, Indonesia’s leading online insurance marketplace, Theodoric Chew, CEO of Intellect, a Singapore-based mental health technology company with an app that hit a million downloads in its first six months, and Huy Nghiem, CEO of Finhay, Vietnam’s leading wealth management platform. This is the second part of the Clubhouse session. For the first part, check out Episode 5.

Transcript

Timestamps

01:33 Lessons for Lifepal on Managing Hypergrowth from Lazada;

05:55 Building Intellect's mission-driven global team for global scale;

11:23 Finhay's secret sauce and expanding into stock investment;

14:42 What excites the founders and Yinglan about Southeast Asia;

Music: Cool Upbeat Background Music For Videos by MorningLightMusic

Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

Back in March we set up our first Clubhouse session with founder-CEOs from three of our portfolio companies that experienced a huge boost in growth over 2020 and talked to them about how they plan on sustaining that growth this year. We got a lot of great insights and we’re sharing them on this episode. So in this episode, we have Giacomo Ficari, CEO of Lifepal, Indonesia’s leading online insurance marketplace, Theodoric Chew, CEO of Intellect, a Singapore-based mental health technology company with an app that hit a million downloads in its first six months, and Huy Nghiem, CEO of Finhay, Vietnam’s leading wealth management platform. This is the first part of the Clubhouse session. For the second part, check out Episode 6. 

Transcript

Timestamps

01:23 Factors of growth apart from the pandemic in 2020:

07:00 Strategies for sustaining growth from 2020 coming into 2021;

13:04 How fast-growth influenced leadership approach for CEOs;

17:56 Challenges in finding the next product-market fits;

Music: Cool Upbeat Background Music For Videos by MorningLightMusic

Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

We're back with a returning guest, one of our very first, whom we had the pleasure of calling a little more than a year ago, the CEO and co-founder of Indonesian supply chain financing startup AwanTunai, Dino Setiawan. A year ago, AwanTunai was in the midst of dealing with the initial onset of COVID-19 and Indonesia, despite the difficulties of operating in the lending and financing industry, which was hit with high NPLs, Dino and his team managed to adapt quickly to the situation and turn it into a source of growth, launching several new products, extending financing to their suppliers all while keeping their NPLs low. Recorded via Zoom on April 7, 2021. 

Transcript

Timestamps

01:38 Dino updates on AwanTunai's 2021 Q1;

03:41 Dino on speeding ahead their SaaS product development in 2020;

05:44 How AwanTunai prioritizes its product development and business lines;

09:20 AwanTunai's outlook for the rest of 2021 and their relationship with banks;

12:08 Dino on sustaining high repayment rates through 2021;

14:00 Dino on lending as key to unlocking SaaS adoption for SMEs in rural Indonesia;

16:37 AwanTunai's research on micro-farm financing;

18:08 Dino on staying true to the vision for AwanTunai's next five years;

20:04 Rapid Fire Round;

About our guests

Dino Setiawan is the CEO and co-founder of AwanTunai. He is a finance veteran with more than a decade of experience spanning several countries which includes a tenure as VP for Investments at Morgan Stanley among other roles at major financial institutions. After finishing his Master's at the Stanford Business School in 2011, he started off his entrepreneurial journey running his own fintech venture in Silicon Valley, SimpleFi, before returning to Indonesia as a regional fintech consultant. Together with ex-Gojek execs Rama Notowidigdo and Windy Natriavi, he later co-founded AwanTunai, an Indonesian fintech startup providing accessible financing to micro-merchants by digitizing the FMCG supply chain.

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Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

Today we have on-call Dayu Dara Permata and Ahmed Aljunied, CEO and CTO of Pinhome, Indonesia’s largest property transaction platform. They are both Gojek alumni, and have been on our show last Season. Last time, they introduced Pinhome and lessons from Gojek they’ve brought into the business.

Now Pinhome has grown into Indonesia’s largest property marketplace and expanded into other related services as well. This time around, they’re going to share a bit more about the company’s phenomenal growth over the past few months, Indonesia’s property market, and their thoughts on the exciting developments in Indonesia’s tech startup scene this year.

Let’s dial into their call with our founding managing partner Yinglan. This Zoom call was recorded March 24, 2021. 

Transcript

Timestamps

01:05 Dara and Ahmed reintroduce Pinhome and share outlook on Indonesian economy and property market recovery;

04:39 Dara shares the mechanics of their AVM Pinvalue and Ahmed compares it to Zillow's Zestimate;

08:41 Dara and Ahmed on impact of pandemic on consumer behavior around property;

11:48 Dara shares Pinhome user story and the importance of property financing;

15:57 Ahmed on things he wish he knew building Pinhome;

17:03 Dara on the next five years of Pinhome;

18:25 Rapid Fire Round;

21:23 Misconception people have about Indonesia's property sector;

23:13 Why Insignia invested in Pinhome pre-product and pre-revenue;

About our guests

Prior to Pinhome, Dara was a Senior Vice President at Go-Jek where she led Gojek expansion to 100+ cities as SVP Regional Growth, co-founded and scaled Go-Life from concept into 15M users in 80+ cities in Indonesia & was responsible for Commerce Product Group in Gojek like Gomart & Goshop. She was also formerly a consultant at McKinsey before joining Go-Jek. Dara graduated with a bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from the Bandung Institute of Technology, and was an honor student and full scholar.

Ahmed is a veteran CTO with over 14 years of technical experience. He is well-versed in product development and building systems, and was previously VP of Engineering and Product at Go-Jek before starting Pinhome. He has also led engineering and product teams at startups like Jualo (acquired by Carro) and started a couple of startups in Singapore and Jakarta. Ahmed is a graduate of Computer Engineering at NUS and received his Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Music: Cool Upbeat Background Music For Videos by MorningLightMusic

Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

On this episode, we have on call Aaron Tan, CEO and co-founder of Carro, Southeast Asia’s leading car marketplace. Aaron has been on the show before on a panel to share learnings from steering Carro through the early onset of the pandemic. We’ve also had the opportunity to talk to the leaders of Carro from their Head of Tech to CMO and CFO. This time around, however, we’ve invited Aaron back to share his perspective at the helm of Singapore’s fastest-growing company into the future. This call was recorded March 24, 2021.

Transcript

Timestamps

01:00 Updates on Carro's past quarter;

03:00 Role of AI and machine learning in Carro's business;

07:32 Prioritizing AI and machine learning use cases;

10:10 Building an effective B2C sales organization;

12:24 Hiring for C-suite and leadership positions;

15:09 Learnings from the past five years and vision for the next five;

20:20 Rapid Fire Round;

20:34 Thoughts on EV adoption in SEA;

22:45 Aaron asks Yinglan about SPACs;

About our guest

Aaron is CEO and co-founder of Carro, Southeast Asia's largest and leading auto retail marketplace, which has recently been featured as Singapore's fastest-growing company in 2021 according to Straits Times and APAC's top high growth company from the 2021 list by Nikkei Asia and Financial Times. He is a programmer by training and a venture capitalist by profession. Prior to Carro, Aaron joined SEA’s leading venture fund - Singtel Innov8 ventures. Aaron was instrumental in the starting of Blk71 – Singapore’s largest startup ecosystem - as well as setting up the firm’s San Francisco operations. He graduated summa cum laude with a double degree, BSc and MSc from Singapore Management University School of Information Systems and Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science.

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Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

In this episode, we have returning guest Hendra Kwik, CEO and co-founder of Payfazz. The last time Hendra was on the show last year, he and Yinglan talked about building the Google Play for fintech apps in Indonesia. Since then, Payfazz surpassed more than US$2 billion worth of transactions processed last year. The company also recently announced the formation of Fazz Financial Group with their investment into Xfers, a Singapore API fintech, as Payfazz builds on regional growth and becomes what Hendra calls the “Alphabet” for fintech in Southeast Asia.

Dial in Hendra’s catchup call with our founding managing partner Yinglan as they chat about Payfazz’s regional ambitions through Fazz Financial and how Hendra’s own leadership and mindset have evolved with the company’s rapid growth. This call was recorded March 23, 2021.

Transcript

Timestamps

00:53 Hendra gives a company update;

01:48 Approach behind Xfers investment;

04:16 Factors behind formation of Fazz Financial;

05:52 Change in leadership approach as company goes regional;

07:49 Advice for founders as companies scale;

09:21 Impact of increased interest in financial services by regional giants on Fazz Financial;

11:20 Lessons from the last five years of Payfazz and outlook for the next five years;

13:14 Hendra's perspective on the richness of the Payfazz ecosystem;

15:20 Rapid Fire Round;

16:33 Hendra's advice for early stage founders;

18:02 Hendra asks Yinglan about his role as a board of director;

Hendra is Group CEO of Fazz Financial and co-founder CEO of Payfazz. Payfazz is the first Indonesian startup to graduate from the Y Combinator program and have been part of YC's "Top 100 companies of all time" list for two years running. In 2019 the company was also named as one of "Indonesia's best company to work for in Asia" and were recipients of the Singapore Venture Capital and Private Equity Association's "Deal of the Year" along with Insignia Ventures Partners.

Prior to starting Payfazz, Hendra was the Head of Growth at Kudo (acquired by Grab), where he engineered the growth of the company's offline-to-online agent network. Hendra holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Institute Teknologi Bandung (ITB), one of the most prestigious universities in Indonesia, where he was awarded the University Most Outstanding Student and graduated as a valedictorian in 2012.

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Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.