GajiGesa and Fintech for the Unbanked across Southeast Asia with Vidit Agrawal
Fresh out of the studio, Vidit Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of GajiGesa discuss the backstory of the fintech company focusing on developing financial services for the unbanked across Southeast Asia, starting from Indonesia. The conversation with Vidit's background with high growth tech companies: Uber and Stripe and he shared his perspectives on he invests as an angel investor. Vidit dived deeper into the unbanked market and how GajiGesa aims to solve that challenge, and offered his mental model in how one should think about geographical expansion across Southeast Asia as an entrepreneur.
"First, I think happy employee and employer partners, for us, great customer experience is important. Secondly, technology driven products that improve the lives of the workers across the region. That's great tech. And happy and motivated gajiGesa team with a lot of career growth opportunities. That's a great team. So I've put great under these three buckets." - Vidit Agrawal
Introduction
- Vidit Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of GajiGesa (@vidagrawal , Linkedin)
- Since you are here for the first time, how did you start your career?
- From Uber to Stripe, what are the things you have learned in high growth companies that can be brought to building startups?
- What are the interesting career lessons you can share with my audience?
- As a known angel investor, what are the leading indicators that you use to evaluate your investment decisions on startups?
GajiGesa & Fintech for the Unbanked in Southeast Asia
- What is the inspiration behind GajiGesa?
- What is the vision and mission of GajiGesa?
- Before we dive deeper into the company, can you baseline what an unbanked customer is in an emerging market such as Indonesia?
- As I understand that GajiGesa focuses on offering Earned Wage Access (EWA) and other services for workers in Indonesia, can you describe the market opportunity and how GajiGesa serves these customers?
- How many employers are currently on the GajiGesa platform in Indonesia and what is the onboarding process like?
- What are the key services that GajiGesa provides them once they are on the platform?
- What is the business model for GajiGesa since you don’t charge interest rates or require collateral?
- Does your platform evolve towards providing credit scoring for the unbanked given that the platform can construct the profile of the users through their wages on the platform?
- GajiGesa has recently raised a US$6.6m pre-series A round, how was the round assembled and who are your key investors?
- Given that you have raised the new round, what are the key things that the company will be focusing on?
- What are your thoughts on the fintech space in Southeast Asia and how does one think about go-to-market strategy in emerging markets such as Indonesia and Philippines?
- Do you see a convergence of technologies such as cryptocurrencies or web3 with fintech?
- What do you think about geographical expansion in Southeast Asia? For some founders, serving the Indonesian market alone is enough. How do you shift gears to get into another market?
- What does great look like for GajiGesa?
Closing
- Any recommendations that have inspired you recently?
- Vidit's recommendations: "Never split the difference" by Chris Voss, "High Growth Handbook" by Elad Gil
- How can my audience find you?