The Asia Tech Podcast spoke to Dima Djani, the CEO of ALAMI in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. At university, Dima majored in Entrepreneurship because he was confident that one day he was going to start and run his own business. During his university years, he also went on an exchange program to the University of North Carolin at Greensboro which was kind of a cool introduction to college hoops. Dima graduated in 2008, just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers which made finding work back in Asia harder than it needed to be. By the time he arrived in Singapore, the initial consulting job he was offered was gone, but Dima is a survivor. He was fortunate to find a job back in Jakarta at Citigroup and spent the next seven years working there. After a fruitful career in traditional finance, including three more years at Societe Generale in Jakarta during which Dima enrolled in the Executive MBA Program at INSEAD in Singapore. It was during this time that his entrepreneurial juices started flowing again and he turned to something that was very personal for him and an idea about which he was quite passionate. He left his job at SocGen and founder ALAMI, which he dubs, ‘The Marketplace for Sharia Financing.’ I learned some new terms from Dima that I wanted to share: Mushraka and Mudharaba – These are both terms that describe a financial partnership in which profits are shared. See a more detailed definition here. Murabahah – This is akin to cost-plus financing. See a more detailed definition here. Wakalah Bil Ujrah – This is akin to a paid agency model. See a more detailed definition here.

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