The Green Room | Fintech Journeys in Asia

Season 4 Trailer

Welcome back to season 4 to the Green Room, a podcast where we go behind the scenes with fintech entrepreneurs and thought leaders in Asia about their careers, impact, and industry insights. I'm your host, Amrita Vir.
I’m excited to be back sharing my fintech conversations with you. This season, we’ll go back to some fintech basics like payments, lending, and insurance. In the current macro environment, I want to check in to see how these verticals are doing. Don’t worry, we’ll still talk about some alternative fintech models. I also have a couple bonus episodes lined up with some badass leaders that have unique perspectives - I thought you might like to hear their stories too.
Thanks for listening the Green Room Podcast. We’re sponsored by the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (or AFIN), Oxygen by APIX, and open banking fintech Brankas. If you know anyone who would be a great guest or have any feedback, reach out to us at greenroomfintech@gmail.com. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy season 4. Happy listening!

Stablecoins for Emerging Markets with Sherry Jiang of Bluejay

In the last episode of Sesason 3 of The Green Room, I speak with Sherry Jiang, Co-founder and CEO of Bluejay, a web3 startup that uses a decentralized stablecoin protocol to issue stablecoins pegged to non-US currencies.
Sherry is from California, spent her early career in big tech and social impact, and moved to Singapore in 2018 with Google. She spent time working on Google Pay in India and had a first row seat to the challenges to financial inclusion with web2 payments. Seeing the infrastructure possilbities with web3, Sherry founded Bluejay a little over a year ago in Q3 of 2021.
Bluejay mints emerging market stablecoins and manages a pool of capital to maintain a peg that reflects the real-world value of currency, which has become especially useful for cases like cross-border business payments and payroll. Bluejay’s first market is Singapore, and they are looking to expand across Asia. They closed a $2.9 million seed round in July. You can learn more about them by visiting bluejay.finance.

Building Fintech DNA for Banks with Ankur Joshi of Nuclei

In this episode, I speak with Ankur Joshi, founder and CEO of Nuclei, a B2B SaaS fintech that helps banks deliver consumer-centric experiences to their customers.
Ankur grew up in India, is an IIT grad, and has been a serial entrepreneur for more than 10 years. He’s worked in startups covering everything from e-commerce to quick serve restaurants to app aggregation - and he has used his lessons across industries and startups as he builds Nuclei.
Nuclei was founded in 2018 in India but aims to serve a global market. Nuclei has several modular products targeting different banking verticals that enable banks to operate like a fintech resulting in a seamless consumer experience. To date, Nuclei has been a bootstrapped business and currently serve more than 18 banks across the globe. You can learn more about them by visting gonuclei.com.

NFTs for South Asian Representation with Ananya Sinha of Brown Baddies

In this episode, I speak with Ananya Sinha, the founder of Brown Baddies, an NFT project focused on elevating South Asian women.
Ananya was born in New Zealand, grew up in Australia, and is now telling the stories of South Asian women all over the world via NFTs. Ananya is relatively new to web3, but has been an entrepreneur since her uni days at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Ananya spent her pandemic years working as a consultant at Publicis Sapient, and in March, she turned investor with Artesian.
Brown Baddies has been Ananya’s side hustle NFT project since the beginning of 2022. I actually found out about them through an Instagram post, and as a South Asian woman, I was thrilled to finally see an NFT project that I could relate to. I couldn’t help but reach out to Ananya to have her on the the Green Room podcast. Brown Baddies isn’t just minting NFTs - proceeds are going to important iniatives like supporing NGOs working to combat gender-based violence in South Asia and creating a global directory of South Asian women-owned businesses. You can learn more about them by visting brownbaddies.xyz and following @BrownBaddiesNFT on Twitter.

Alternative Data for MSMEs in SEA with Kunal Goel of PowerCred

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.

Loyalty and Rewards in Vietnam with Lan Doan of TAPTAP

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.

Stablecoin-based Credit in Emerging Markets with Aaron Collett of Goldfinch

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.

SME Financing in Indonesia with Windy Natriavi of AwanTunai

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.