How Kelvin Teo Built Southeast Asia’s Largest SME FinTech Empire - E678
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
46 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 16 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why did Kelvin decide to leave a stable job after graduating from Harvard?
basically will be on track to be the first group of hardest citizens to lose their job upon graduation. Like
How did Kelvin and his co‑founder identify the biggest financing problem for SMEs in Southeast Asia?
And at that time I was uh I was getting married, so uh like I just was a bit it was an interesting time to tell my parents in law that hey, your son in law is gonna be out of job very soon. When it comes to let's say uh custom acquisition also, for every ten customers that I meet, I can and g give me a document, I approve two. Meaning that I waste eight of them or so.
Why did Kelvin choose a Harvard MBA over a private‑equity career and how did that shape Funding Societies?
And that I need to reacquire them as customers, right? What if I can actually acquire them and keep them for longer? Reminish six times the GTV in three years, despite Knowing that much about payments, and one of the major lessons is that org structure is the last thing you should be integrating. What you should be integrating is mindset, thinking, culture, values, all the things that are below the surface.
What was the process of finding the right co‑founder and building the founding team?
We're very fortunate that the core group stayed with us and integrated with Funding Society's team very well, and now it has become an integral part of our business. We were among the first to conduct a layoff which was quite unheard of in the industry because to us is that the writing was all that this has to happen. It was a very painful model. because despite in our view doing the right thing and turns out that all the team members did get great jobs from Grab and Amazon and Facebook and Blackwell and so forth but we were destroyed in social media in news and whatnot as if we are the only company that screwed up.
Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech leaders. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on success. I'm Jeremy Al, Venture Capitalist, Sierra founder, Harvard MBA, science fiction nerd, and dad of two daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights. Join our movement of over 40,000 members and get transcripts, resources, and community at www.bravesdea.com.
What strategic logic guided the expansion into Singapore versus Indonesia and other markets?
Um Stay well and stay brave. Hey Calvin, really excited to have you on the show. You built a regional fintech company and I think it's so inspiring to so many people in the ecosystem. Calvin, could you introduce yourself?
So, maybe a quick introduction. I'm Calvin, a co-founder of Funding Societies. We are the largest SME digital financing platform in Southeast Asia. We exist to really empower the growth of small and medium businesses, and we do it in two ways. Number one is by solving one of the biggest problems they have, which is really working capital loans.
How did Funding Societies learn from early defaults and manage concentration risk?
So, really providing all forms of short-term working capital loans to small and medium businesses. And in 2022, December, we we embark on a journey to solve that second. Second big problem, which is really managing the payments in and out. And hence we acquired card up with the MES approval. And now we offer both solutions and we're operating across five countries in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, having given out about five billion USD of financing to date, processing about one and a half B of payments every year, really empowering the growth of small and medium businesses, hence because funding societies, fund the growth of societies. I think as an individual, I'm a Malaysian by birth, came over to Singapore on the Ascent Scholarship, River Valley High School, A levels at Victoria Junior College, and then National University of Singapore, where I graduated as a valedictorian in business administration accountancy.
As the pioneer bachelor in accounting, went to the entrepreneurship program, NOC, to the US. Um, that's also where I get the first exposure towards entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania. Came back, started my career with Accenture for
Why did Funding Societies acquire CardUp and how does the payments business fit into its roadmap?
management consulting, went to McKinsey after.
How did Kelvin handle regulatory hurdles and the painful layoff decision during the FinTech winter?
That's where I did a bank transformation in Indonesia, KKR for a brief period of private equity, but really more on the up execution side. And then Harvard Business Square and that's where we started funding societies.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why did Kelvin decide to leave a stable job after graduating from Harvard?
0:00–0:04
2
How did Kelvin and his co‑founder identify the biggest financing problem for SMEs in Southeast Asia?
0:04–0:21
3
Why did Kelvin choose a Harvard MBA over a private‑equity career and how did that shape Funding Societies?
0:21–0:39
4
What was the process of finding the right co‑founder and building the founding team?
0:39–1:45
5
What strategic logic guided the expansion into Singapore versus Indonesia and other markets?
1:45–2:18
6
How did Funding Societies learn from early defaults and manage concentration risk?
2:18–3:17
7
Why did Funding Societies acquire CardUp and how does the payments business fit into its roadmap?
3:17–3:19
8
How did Kelvin handle regulatory hurdles and the painful layoff decision during the FinTech winter?
3:19–46:53
Speakers
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