In case you missed out on the March episodes of the Voice of FinTech podcast, here is the monthly summary! You can listen to all the episodes on the Episodes pages of this website or when you subscribe to your favorite podcast apps under Subscribe.

Building solutions for DeFi traders and doing private deals in a modern age

Antoine Loth and Elie Azzi, co-founders of Valk, spoke to Rudolf Falat, founder of the Voice of FinTech podcast, about scaling up their platform for private deals during the pandemic (several billion USD in volume!) and building new DeFi solutions for another exponential growth opportunity.

Here is what they talked about:

Antoine, Elie – what are your backgrounds?
The problems that Valk is solving
More details on a recently launched full suite of DeFi solutions
What protocols are you integrated with today and what are the next steps?
How is your DeFi solution linked to your original VDeal solution focused on private markets and tokenization?
Target clients
How big is the opportunity that Valk is tackling
Valk has grown tremendously in the past year. Antoine's advice to other founders on how to grow and scale platforms quickly
Geographical coverage and international ambitions
Any good book on DeFi?
What's the best way to reach out

Financial services for migrants with Rewire's CEO and co-founder, Guy Kashtan

Guy Kashtan, CEO and co-founder of Rewire, headquartered in Israel, spoke to Rudolf Falat, founder of the Voice of FinTech podcast, about innovative ways his company uses to provide financial services to migrants, including refugees all across the EU, UK and Israel.

Here is what they talked about:

Guy's background, what led him to co-found Rewire
Rewire’s mission to provide transparent and effortless financial services to migrants
What type of migrants do you have in mind? Which countries? What about refugees?
Rewire's financial services for migrants: basic bank account even without an address, ability to send money home cheaply and easily and more
Rewire recently secured USD 25 million from Migdal Insurance to add insurance products to their portfolio - at the host country and for family back at home
Size of the opportunity Guy and his team are tackling
Technology angle behind their solution
Business model
Size of the team and where in the world are Rewire's employees and clients based
Guy's favorite business book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers (again on this podcast!)
The best way to reach out

Making BNPL smarter and more impactful with Brian Shniderman, US CEO and Global Chief Strategy Officer at Openpay (Opy)

Brian Shniderman, US CEO and Global Chief Strategy Officer at Openpay (Opy), spoke to Rudolf Falat, founder of the Voice of FinTech podcast, about building the next generation of BNPL, smart BNPL!

Here is what they covered:

Brian's background and his journey to Opy
What's Opy's mission? What's the problem that Opy is solving?
Level setting: how does BNPL work? How do you assess credit risk?
What does Opy provide? Financing for larger purchases, e.g. healthcare / dental purchases, auto repairs, education
How do you differ from other BNPL solutions out there? Carefully selected industry verticals, strategic partnerships with the vendors and financing facility of USD 270m+ from Goldman Sachs
BNPL has been growing tremendously in some markets, but it's unavailable in some. Where does Brian see the most significant potential
What's the technology behind Opy's solution
Business model
From Australia to the US, UK and New Zealand - key markets and ambitions
Recommended book: A CEO Only Does Three Things: Finding Your Focus in the C-Suite
The best way to reach out: Brian Shniderman (Linkedin) or e-mail: bshniderman@opy.com

Voice of FinTech Africa Series with Patrick Awori: African VC perspectives with Lavanya Anand, Principal of VestedWorld

Start-up funding in Africa is growing tremendously, from less than USD $2 billion reported in 2019, to well over USD $4 billion in 2021 (USD $1 million raised every two hours), and over $1 billion in the first two months of 2022 alone according to Briter Bridges. While this is an encouraging trend from a market capitalization standpoint, the fact that the bulk of these inflows are targeted at the FinTech sector alone (over 70%), and raised mostly by foreign-registered start-ups or those whose Founders or CEOs studied abroad raises questions about this capital’s effectiveness in realizing the long-term economic and social impact. This episode investigates these trends from the starting point. We interview Lavanya Anand, Principal at Vested World, a leading early-stage VC with a diversified portfolio covering East and West Africa.

Among other topics, we discuss the kinds of opportunities that VestedWorld is interested in, their various sources of deal-flow, and their expectations of the companies they invest in.

Lavanya argues that while FinTech is an important enabler of the African economy, there is also a need to invest in other areas like logistics, food security, education in order to create jobs and make everything else work. We also explore the critical role of local capital in driving growth in the African ecosystem, especially in the early stages.

Finally, we conclude our conversation with some insights from her experience in investing, and why for the bold and daring, Africa is the future.

Play to earn and give back to the community with Brendan Wong, CEO and co-founder of Avocado Guild

Creative solutions to drive gamers' engagement through play to earn and give back to the community are emerging at the cross-over of the metaverse, FinTech, and gaming. Listen to Brendan Wong, CEO and co-founder of Avocado Guild based in Singapore, which enables players to participate in games like Axie Infinity or Cyball to earn money and support their community, the largest one now in the Philippines speaking to Rudolf Falat, founder of the Voice of FinTech podcast, about how it all works.

Brendan's background - how he got to what he does today
Avocado Guild: a community, building and shaping the future of GameFi via onboarding and educating new Web3 users.
What does it mean, pay to play?
How does Avocado Guild work? Financing players so they can buy digital Axies within Axie Infinity (for example) and start playing to earn
Bridging metaverse and real-world - how is Avocado Guild building community outside of games
When one wants to start a network, or a community, you face a cold start problem. How did Avocado start?
Avocado Guild just raised USD 18 million - how big are its growth ambitions?
What’s the technology behind Avocado Guild
How does guild make money?
How big is your team, and where are you based? Hint: geographical focus now and the ambition to scale up
Brendan's favorite game at the moment: Cyball, CyBall is a football-themed, NFT-based blockchain game with a play-to-earn model that allows you to test your might against players from around the world
What’s the best way to reach out: @BrendinoAG (Telegram) or e-mail: brendan@avocadoguild.com

Asia Pacific Series with Taneia Bhardwaj: Digitizing home loans with Atul Monga, co-founder & CEO of BASIC Home Loan

In this episode of Voice of Fintech, we spotlight the revolution that is underway in India's most significant asset class - property or real estate. Our guest today is Atul Monga, Co-Founder & CEO of BASIC Home Loan. This FinTech company is working to digitize home loans, especially for middle and low-income households in India.

Here is what Taneia Bhardwaj, our APAC Series host, based in Mumbai, asked Atul:

You are a mechanical engineer by training who has spent a fair bit of time in investment banking. What led you to start your own business, that too, during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020?

Talk to us a bit of the business you have built - BASIC home loan - as someone who has taken a home loan herself - what's shocking and frustrating in equal measure is the complete lack of digitization in the entire process -there's never-ending paperwork, complicated math, and stress! So how are you solving this? How are you delighting customers? Reinventing the process?
What are some of India's trends that support and drive protection - on the search, supervise, and sell-side?
How did you nail your go-to-market strategy? How did you validate your value proposition and ensure that you were developing a product that people wanted instead of creating something based on your intuition?
Is winning clients a lengthy process because real estate is traditionally a conservative brick-and-mortar business in more ways than one?
Scale-up plans?
When will we see the one-click mortgage, the embedded finance component of PropTech, take off in India?

Building a successful neobank in the US with Scott Sanborn, CEO of Lending Club

Scott Sanborn, CEO of Lending Club, a listed US FinTech unicorn, Lendit FinTech's Executive of the Year, spoke to Rudolf Falat, founder of the Voice of FinTech podcast, about building a successful neobank in the US.

More specifically, they covered:

Scott's journey from marketing to FinTech
What's right and wrong with traditional banking, and how can a neobank like Lending Club fix it
How does Lending Club help its clients to stay or become financially healthy?
How Lending Club works
Thoughts on the rise of BNPL
Business model
Technology angle
Key clients
How did LendingClub cope with the pandemic?
You are Lendit's Executive of the Year – how do you feel about it?
Additional recommended resources for entrepreneurs: How I built this (podcast) and Antifragile
The best way to reach out: sanborn@lendingclub.com

If you have suggestions for topics or guests on the show or have ideas about how to make this podcast better for you, please e-mail us at info@voiceoffintech.com. Alternatively, you can also leave a voicemail here.

Keep safe!

Sincerely,

Rudolf Falat