Not every fintech story here is coming from Saudi or the Gulf. Joining me at Money 20/20 in Riyadh is Anshul Johri, Group Chief Technology Officer at Validus, one of Southeast Asia's leading SME financing platforms based in Singapore. Welcome to Wall Street to Mena.
Thank you for having me.
What brings Validus all the way from Singapore to Money 20/20?
Two things. First, I got an invitation to speak on a panel and share my experience. I have spent a decade in Southeast Asia building SME finance and consumer finance, scaling digital technologies for multiple unicorns. The second reason — Southeast Asia has very strong similarities to other emerging markets. When you come to the GCC or Saudi, this is an emerging market like Indonesia, Vietnam, or Thailand. I wanted to understand the similarities, differences, and opportunities between Southeast Asia and the GCC.
This is your first time in Riyadh. Has your picture of Saudi changed?
Completely changed — not only from the ecosystem we are seeing, but also the infrastructure and the government support. I was reading about how the Saudi government is creating a digital commerce platform ecosystem for SMEs, integrating and using digital commerce data to lend them. This is something we have seen in Southeast Asia as well. And throughout this conference, what I keep seeing is: the government is supporting this, the government is initiating this, there is so much innovation happening. Capital is not the problem. Finding the right SME and underwriting them is the biggest challenge — and the Saudi government is trying to solve this through multiple innovations and startups. That was the biggest surprise to me compared to Southeast Asia.
You were on a supply chain finance panel with Mastercard MENA and Lulu Finance. What was the biggest takeaway?
The biggest takeaway was not the availability of finance. The biggest takeaway was — how do you reach the SME who needs the money? When an SME wakes up in the morning, they do not wake up thinking about credit scoring. They wake up thinking about how to fund payroll, how to take more inventory to get more business. The funding capital was not the problem. The discussion was: how do we connect to the right APIs with the government, leverage the government ecosystem — whether it is a banking API system or an invoicing system — and bring technology in between to empower SMEs before they come to you. You go to them and say: we have identified you as one of the good SMEs in this product, why do you not take this?
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me.
