The On Call with Insignia Podcast

We're back with a returning guest, one of our very first, whom we had the pleasure of calling a little more than a year ago, the CEO and co-founder of Indonesian supply chain financing startup AwanTunai , Dino Setiawan . A year ago, AwanTunai was in the midst of dealing with the initial onset of COVID-19 and Indonesia, despite the difficulties of operating in the lending and financing industry, wh...

Today we have on-call Dayu Dara Permata and Ahmed Aljunied , CEO and CTO of Pinhome , Indonesia’s largest property transaction platform. They are both Gojek alumni, and have been on our show last Season. Last time, they introduced Pinhome and lessons from Gojek they’ve brought into the business. Now Pinhome has grown into Indonesia’s largest property marketplace and expanded into other related ser...

On this episode, we have on call Aaron Tan , CEO and co-founder of Carro , Southeast Asia’s leading car marketplace. Aaron has been on the show before on a panel to share learnings from steering Carro through the early onset of the pandemic. We’ve also had the opportunity to talk to the leaders of Carro from their Head of Tech to CMO and CFO. This time around, however, we’ve invited Aaron back to...

In this episode, we have returning guest Hendra Kwik , CEO and co-founder of Payfazz . The last time Hendra was on the show last year, he and Yinglan talked about building the Google Play for fintech apps in Indonesia. Since then, Payfazz surpassed more than US$2 billion worth of transactions processed last year. The company also recently announced the formation of Fazz Financial Group with their...

On Call with Insignia Ventures is back with another season. Your hosts Yinglan Tan, founding managing partner of Insignia Ventures, and your truly, Paulo Joquino, get back to going on calls with founders and investors in South East Asia, catching up on the latest developments with their company, industry insights, and lessons and what it takes to build a great company. Stay on the line for fresh c...

This past season we expanded our guest list beyond CEOs and founders and rang up other C-suite founders and execs, so for this remix we’ve grouped insights from our guests this season into eight themes or perspectives that have been quite important or impactful for Southeast Asia’s tech ecosystem over the past year and moving into 2021: lean marketing, remote work and employee mental health, Singa...

We began Season 2 of On Call with Insignia with the aim of showcasing more startup founders and leaders from Southeast Asia, specifically those in non-CEO roles, to shed light on their perspectives on growth and their respective industries. Over the course of the past 16 episodes, we’ve had the pleasure of featuring CMOs, COOs, CPOs, heads of marketing and strategy, and CTOs alongside our usual li...

2020 has been a year of greater awareness around health, and over the past year, we saw not only increased demand for online health services -- like mental health company Intellect, whose CEO we talked to the previous week -- but also insurance products as well. However, even with this interest in insurance products, buying insurance still remains a difficult and even painful experience in emergin...

To kick off another year of calls, we’re going to start by talking about a topic that has been getting increasing attention recently -- mental health. With people stuck at home and the stigma associated with availing of mental health care especially in Asia, apps and online platforms have emerged to serve as tools for people to better understand their mental well-being and connect with the right p...

From 2020, we have seen many inspiring stories of resilience have emerged in what has been an unprecedented year, and to close it off, we tell one such story from our portfolio.  Despite the negative impact of COVID on lending and financing businesses in Indonesia,  AwanTunai  has been able to grow their loan book 2x, secure an OJK lending license and raise a $20 million debt facili...

2020 has been an unimaginably challenging year for tech startups. Even with the digitalization opportunities opened up by the impact of COVID19, founders navigated uncharted territory when it came to managing remote teams, acquiring and retaining clients, and fundraising in the new normal. From their experiences many inspiring stories of resilience have emerged, and to close 2020 we tell one such...

Joining us on call from Singapore is Ernest Chew, Chief Financial Officer (or Chief Future Officer, as he would consider it) at Carro Group , the largest and leading automobile marketplace in Southeast Asia. Ernest is the first CFO on our show, and he shares his journey from HSBC exec to tech company CFO, a rundown of the biggest financial developments in Carro since joining the company earlier th...

We've shared the stories of many founders and companies that thrived on having local DNA. In this episode, we flip the script and hear from a Singaporean who went on the ground in Indonesia to tap into the market's social commerce opportunity.  Albert Ho, Chief Strategy Officer at RateS, the cross-border social commerce platform enabling Indonesians to thrive as resellers and microentrepreneu...

To mark 30 episodes of On Call with Insignia, we're prepared this special edition featuring the best insights from our past conversations with fintech founders on what it takes to scale a fintech in Southeast Asia. From MSME financing to wealth management to digital banking, get a preview into different business models and strategies for growth. In this playlist we've featured (in order of appeara...

This episode is part two of our conversation with Nathaniel Yim , co-founder and head of marketing at Janio Asia , leading Southeast Asia logistics technology platform. While in part one Nathan shared how Janio's content marketing strategy has contributed to commercial success for the company, this time he dishes out practical advice on handling speaking engagements, press releases, and ads, as we...

In this episode, we're back with another two-part series with a marketing leader in our portfolio, this time from leading Southeast Asia logistics technology platform Janio Asia . Janio co-founder and Head of Marketing Nathaniel Yim shares in this first part the origins of the Janio brand and how they leveraged on thought leadership and content strategy to build a credible and trustworthy brand fo...

Vietnam is one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing economies. And this year in spite of the current economic situation, it has become the only Asian economy apart from China set to see GDP growth this year. But for small to medium investors investing in this economic growth can be quite difficult and expensive, especially for younger millennial consumers who comprise the majority of Vietnam's popu...

We’ve seen how many first wave Southeast Asian founders worked at unicorns and big tech companies in the US or China before returning to start their own. More recently we’re seeing alumni of Southeast Asian unicorns and tech companies found their own startups to solve more problems at scale.  And today, we went on call with founders who have done just that: Indonesia property marketplace Pinh...

In this episode, to help us better understand what it takes to build a neobank in Southeast Asia, we called Andrea Baronchelli , CEO and co-founder of Aspire (Y Combinator Winter Cohort 2018). We talked about how Aspire is becoming the banking platform of choice for SMEs in the region, from the pain points and risks of the neobanking trajectory to forging partnerships and a path to profitability....

We're bringing you into the world of smart cities, and to guide us on our journey we had to call Anthony Chow, CEO and co-founder smart access solutions company igloohome . Fresh from igloohome's fifth year anniversary and first virtual iglooCon, Anthony and Yinglan take a trip down memory lane, from the competition where they first met pre-igloohome days to now a company with 130 employees in 13...

Remote work has rapidly transformed from optionality into reality for tech companies around the globe. COVID19 aside, the wheels for remote work adoption have been turning for a while now. More tools are available to facilitate remote work, and there's an increasing preference to explore remote work or work-from-home arrangements among millennials and Gen-Z. But transitioning to a remote-first cul...

We continue our conversation with Manisha Seewal, Group CMO of Carro and CEO of Jualo (acquired by Carro in 2019). After tracing her journey from corporate to startup and understanding her marketing philosophy in the first episode , we now talked about the future -- the future of marketing amidst changing consumer behavior, the future of marketing technology, and the future of Carro and Jualo unde...

For our first episode of On Call with Insignia Season 2, we had a chat with Manisha Seewal, Group Chief Marketing Officer of CARRO, Southeast Asia's leading car marketplace. Our call was quite jampacked so we split it into two episodes -- this first one covers her journey from corporate to tech startup, her philosophy when it comes to leveraging technology for marketing, and a case study on CARRO'...

20 calls. 20 guests. 20 conversations. To recap the past twenty episodes, we put together a playlist of the best advice from the twenty technology leaders, investors, and founders we had on call. Stay on the line and connected with us as we gear up for season two with more conversations with Southeast Asia's founders and technology startup leaders!  Music Business As Usual by Causmic Broken P...

In our 20th episode and season finale, we called the inspirational and unstoppable Hendra Kwik , CEO and co-founder of Indonesian fintech company Payfazz . Fresh off their Series B round led by B Capital and Insignia Ventures Partners , and as the company closes in on profitability, Hendra shares his story, from growing up in rural Indonesia to building what he calls the Google Play for fintech ap...