The Green Room | Fintech Journeys in Asia
Amrita Vir goes behind the scenes with fintech CEOs, founders, and thought leaders in Asia to talk about their career journeys and industry insights.
Episodes
In this episode, I speak with Zach Marks, co-founder and CEO of Jia, a fintech leveraging blockchain for receivables financing for businesses in Kenya and the Philippines.
Zach has spent his career working in emerging markets, beginning with teaching English in India after college to development consulting in South Sudan. After building and selling his first tech company, an online jobs marketplace, Zach got into fintech when he jo...
In this episode, I speak with Chandrima Das, Co-Founder and CEO of Teleskop, a wealth tech that helps people track their family assets today and plan for their legacies in the future.
Chandrima has had an illustrious career in asset management, working at Prudential, ING, and Bank of Singapore in several countries, where she had a front-row seat to the sector’s globalization. In the last 10 years, Chandrima has emerged as a success...
In this episode, I speak with Sharon Paul, Co-founder of Headquarters (HQ.xyz), an on-chain business account.
Sharon is a Singaporean entrepreneur and has spent many years advancing the Web3 and payments infrastructure space. She is a founding member of StraitsX, a leading stablecoin issuer and fiat-crypto ramp and now serves on the Singapore Fintech Association's Web3 Subcommittee. Through this work, Sharon realized that despite t...
In this episode, I speak with Hussain Elius, Founder and CEO of Wind, a fintech that is enabling instant cross-border payments built on blockchain rails.
Elius has been a career entrepreneur, starting with building an event management business in university. Once he graduated, Elius took an experimental approach to developing the business model that would eventually become the well known Bangladeshi SuperApp, Pathao. After 6 years ...
In this episode, I speak with Nuraizah Shamsul Baharin, Founder and Managing Director of MADCash, a fintech that drives financial inclusion through Shariah compliant microfinance and data analytics in Malaysia. Nuraizah, who goes by Aizah, started her career as an engineer, working for companies like Nokia and Motorola in the 1990s and 2000s.
Aizah founded MADCash in 2020 with a goal to improve financial access for women MSMEs in M...
In this episode, I speak with Rachel Freeman, Chief Growth Officer of Tyme, a neobank that began operations in South Africa and has recently been making waves in the Philippines as GoTyme.
Rachel has lived in every corner of the world and has been a pioneer of inclusive financial services. She speaks fluent Russian and spent her early career in Russia building a microleasing business. She then spent 17 years at the IFC, which took ...
In this episode, I speak with Maria Hoyos, co-founder and CEO of GoNSave, a fintech focused on income smoothing for gig workers in Southeast Asia.
Maria started her career in microfinance in Latin America. She brought her experience to Asia when she pursued her Master’ of Science in Innovation at Singapore Management University. We talked about the unique needs of gig workers when it comes to income visibility, how gig work should ...
In this episode, I speak with Ritwik Ghosh, co-founder of Seedflex, a brand new embedded SME lending fintech.
Ritwik started his career in banking but quickly moved into consulting at Oliver Wyman, where he focused on retail and SME financial services across South and Southeast Asia. For the last 5 years, Ritwik served as the Regional Head of Lending at Grab, where he drove the growth of embedded credit products for drivers, mercha...
Happy new year everyone, and welcome back to the Green Room! In this podcast, 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.
This is now season 5 of the Green Room. This season we’re covering some fintech basics - income smoothing, SME lending, and digital banking. We’ll also dabble in crypto and ESG and talk about some cr...
In this episode, I speak with Malini Kannan, CEO Office of Thunes, a global B2B cross-border payments infrastructure company.
Malini grew up in India and started her career in Singapore, working in research and strategy across a diverse set of sectors. After her MBA from INSEAD, Malini focused more directly on the fintech space, working across the industry and landing at TransferTo, which incubated the business that eventually beco...
In this episode, I speak with with Aditi Sholapurkar, Co-Founder of SALT, a savings and investment fintech in India that puts women at the center of its product and strategy.
Aditi grew up in India and began her career in banking and has spent time working at some of the most well known fintechs in India and Singapore, including Paytm and Nium. She came to learn that only 5% of customers of Indian fintechs were women and has been o...
In this episode, I speak with The Noe San, Founder and CEO of Modus Operandi, or MO, a digital financial solutions provider in Myanmar, offering services like wallet transfers, bill pay, earned wage access, cash withdrawal, and more.
The Noe grew up in Myanmar and Australia and started her career in law. She moved back to Myanmar in 2020 and got involved in the finance sector through SHWE Bank. She had a front row seat to the impac...
In this episode, I speak with Vikram Kotibhaskar, co-founder and CEO of Credlinq.AI, which provides embedded finance products to digital e-commerce players using alternative data. Vikram was born and raised in India, completed his Master’s in the US, and then spent many years working across diverse banking roles in Asia. Vikram made the jump to fintech founder with Credilinq.AI in January 2021.
Credilinq.AI is focusing their B2B cr...
In this episode, I speak with Maha Shahzad, Founder and CEO of BusCaro, a mobility startup in Pakistan that is changing the way that commuters travel.
Maha grew up between the US and Pakistan and has worked at many well-known startups in Pakistan inluding FoodPanda, Careem, and Swvl. Maha has seen first-hand the financial, accessibility, and security challenges faced by commuters, particularly women, and started BusCaro to solve th...
In this episode, I speak with fintech pioneer, Diego Rojas. He has been at the cutting edge of fintech across the globe.
Diego is from Argentina and started coding when he was 8 years old. He joined LendingClub in its very early days in 2011 and then moved to DianRong, another pioneer in fintech in China. He founded a fintech consulting firm called LEAP FINTECH based in Singapore in 2017 before founding open finance company, Finan...
In this episode, I speak with Rebecca Kersch, Founder and CEO of TANGapp, a remittance and payments company that helps overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the US send money to the Philippines.
Rebecca grew up in the US and the Netherlands, spent many summers visiting her family in the Philippines, and has studied and lived all over the world. Rebecca started her career in management consulting - the same one as me actually, and we ...
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 ho...
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 ...
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 ...
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 a...
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.
"SmartLess" with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, & Will Arnett is a podcast that connects and unites people from all walks of life to learn about shared experiences through thoughtful dialogue and organic hilarity. A nice surprise: in each episode of SmartLess, one of the hosts reveals his mystery guest to the other two. What ensues is a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the SmartLess mind. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of SmartLess ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!