In August 2022, Fazz Financial, the Southeast Asia group formed out of the merger of rural Indonesia fintech Payfazz and payments infrastructure fintech Xfers back in 2019, rebranded to Fazz, bringing together their ecosystem’s various entities into one business account, and later announced raising US$100 million in Series C to build on this next step for the fintech group. We go on call with Fazz Business heads Zack Yap (Singapore) and Hendoko Kwik (Indonesia) to talk about this evolution, what it means for their customers across Singapore and Indonesia, how this fits into the emerging wave of fintech stacks for businesses in a challenging market for financial management, as well as how they have evolved as leaders having been founding team members of Xfers and Modal Rakyat (P2P lending) respectively.

Check out our previous calls with other Fazz leaders, and find out how you can join their growing team.

Highlights and Timestamps

Joining and Growing in the Fazz Family;

“…Because we are coming from at least four different entities, with each entity having its own captive strong market. We are like neo-business banking with Web3 capability, payment strength, lending, and working capital strength, and also agents. Those four variables have already cemented our position; we just need to adjust through under this one new flag called Fazz.” – Hendoko Kwik

Fazz on the Fast Lane: Implications of a “House of Fintech”s Repositioning Under One Brand, One Focus; 

“What we are strong at is we are serving all these kinds of persona through a centralized backend. Let’s say the payment infrastructure, lending infrastructure for micro-SME persona or high-SME persona is going to be under one infrastructure and we can replicate that into our Singapore market.” – Hendoko Kwik

“…our goal for the entire group really is about being able to serve their business needs, their financial operations needs, eventually in one single platform…but catering to the types of devices and types of interactions that they’re more used to…how we see StraitsX and Web3 is that it is gonna be a core part of the future of finance…in the long run we do believe that some dispensary elements will make it into part the business account.” – Zack Yap

Singapore and Indonesia Parallels on the Fintech for Business Landscape;

“…something that we have observed is that a lot of these [fintechs for business], they start off with lending as their core business. Whereas for Xfers, for Fazz, a lot of our background, especially in Singapore, has been based on payments…we are probably the only business neo bank in Singapore that’s connected directly to the FAST network…what this means for us is that from a unit economic perspective is we don’t depend on other people.” – Zack Yap

“In the Indonesian landscape, if we are operating on the FinTech, it’s not the kind of market where winner we take it all…I always tell my team that we just need to be better than ourselves yesterday. We need to iterate on our features and we have set our ultra-focused on what our strengths are…we tend to lock all the money flow, so the data point becomes more robust and robust, and we can tap into more personas.” – Hendoko Kwik

From Founding Team to Growth Stage Management: Professional Growth in Hypergrowth Venture-Backed Companies;

“…something that I really have to unlearn is trying to do everything, trying to make sure that my hand is down in everything, and right now where I’m willing to develop myself on becomes more of how do I grow the team, how do I build the best team, build the right team. I cannot be the smartest person in the room anymore. I should not be.” – Zack Yap

“When it was still Modal Rakyat the power of creation is like very strong on my side. I can direct the sprint with a 10-minute meeting because the organization is smaller. If I want this feature, I can discuss it with my CTO in like 10 minutes manner, and I get the priority on the sprint that I want. Because we grew bigger, we have some standards of doing a sprint, et cetera, so we need to accommodate and be more patient basically.” – Hendoko Kwik

Future of Financial Services for Businesses;

“…because of how, like Hnedoko mentioned, we are kind of like a “House of Fintech”, we have already interfaced with a lot of different types of businesses of different sizes of different industries, we’re in that unique position to be the ones to get this right for Southeast Asia…” – Zack Yap

Rapid Fire Round;

About our guest

Zack Yap is an experienced product manager and engineer with more than a decade’s career in tech companies. He was Xfers’ first product manager then eventually became Head Product Manager and now leads Fazz Business in Singapore.

Hendoko Kwik has a decade of experience in SME banking in various Indonesian banks before co-founding P2P lending business Modal Rakyat. He became CEO of Modal Rakyat and now also leads Fazz Business in Indonesia. He is also a co-founder and commissioner at Verihubs

Transcript

Joining and Growing in the Fazz Family

Paulo: So I mentioned that you guys have had different sort of angles into which you guys came into Fazz. So maybe for our listeners, maybe you guys can introduce yourselves as well and share what was the experience like becoming part of this fintech group. For Zack through Xfers and then for Hendoko through Modal Rakyat.

Zack: So like you mentioned, I joined Xfers about five years ago and was the first product manager and eventually moved into the head of product management position. And when Xfers and Payfazz came together, during that time, we were doing quite a bit of work in trying to string together a couple of initiatives between Xfers and Payfazz.

And I have to call myself as very lucky to have colleagues across the board who have been very supportive with what we’re trying to do, trying to go into the rest of Southeast Asia, trying to help the Southeast Asian economy. During this time, it was quite easy to build trust.

It’s good thing that the whole process started right before the pandemic. So we actually got ourselves our counterparts before the pandemic happened, and were able to help build trust and ease some of these communications. Today, the team has entrusted me to lead Fazz Business, and push into the Singapore market. I’m very happy to be here today.

“When Xfers and Payfazz came together, during that time, we were doing quite a bit of work in trying to string together a couple of initiatives between Xfers and Payfazz…It’s good thing that whole process started right before the pandemic. So we actually got ourselves our counterparts before the pandemic happened, and were able to help build trust and ease some of these communications.”

Paulo: Thanks for that intro. And it’s really interesting that you were the first product manager and then really progressed through and really had a career growth, so to speak. And now leading the push, as you mentioned, for Fazz into Singapore especially.

How about you Hendoko? Maybe you can share a little bit about how you started Modal Rakyat, and then what the experience was like becoming part of the Fazz group.

Hendoko: I have a little bit of a different background where Zack basically started from payments at Xfers. Xfers was all overpayment, but in 2018, I was starting basically peer-to-peer lending platform. We were starting Modal Rakyat at first, and we were targeting “High-SMEs” as our first captive vertical. 

But in late 2019, we started to develop a hybrid product with Payfazz’s warung network. At the time the name was still Payfazz. We worked together to create some in-app micro loans for the 200,000 warungs Payfazz has in their agent network. Everything grew organically; we got the chemistry between the product guys in Payfazz and Modal Rakyat.

And at the time it was a very reasonable step for Payfazz to be our majority shareholder. So organically we become a lending arm for Payfazz because we realized that this micro-SME market is very sexy and very untapped. Even the pricing structure makes sense and we can kind of grow from that.

And later, we grew bigger. We had Xfers as a sister, and we merged together under one brand and suddenly we became a “House of FinTech.” Suddenly, we have everything on our stack that’s why we try to build SMB business banking. Because we are coming from at least four different entities; each entity has its own captive strong market.

We are like neo-business banking with Web3 capability, payment strength, lending and working capital strength and also agents. Those four variables have already cemented our position; we just need to adjust through under this one new flag called Fazz, basically.

“…Because we are coming from at least four different entities, with each entity having their own captive strong market. We are like neo-business banking with Web3 capability, payment strength, lending and working capital strength and also agents. Those four variables have already cemented our position; we just need to adjust through under this one new flag called Fazz.”

Fazz on the Fast Lane: Implications of a “House of Fintech”s Rebranding Under One Focus 

Paulo: I think a few key points from what you shared really is the one is that Fazz’s whole evolution is actually building on what already have. You mentioned the four things. And just for our listeners, right? So, Hendoko was talking about obviously Payfazz with its agent network, Xfers with its payment infrastructure, Modal Rakyat with the P2P license that you talked about, and also the lending capabilities and then StraitsX with the digital asset sort of infrastructure and capabilities as well.

So all those things coming together, as you mentioned with this, I find that term interesting, “House of Fintech,” I think it’s really interesting how you are part of that journey. And I also wanted to talk about later also the difference in how you’re balancing between the micro-segment, which you called sexy, and then also tapping into other types of businesses, right, apart from the micro-SMEs, but we’ll talk about that later. 

But first, maybe you can share a really basic one-on-one thing for our listeners, which is how is the Fazz rebranding now different from Fazz Financial group before? 

Zack: So I think as for what Hendoko mentioned just now, we are kind of like a “House of Fintech” right now, combining the different services and the different strengths that we already have into one brand. To be honest, I reviewed our current mission and I took a look at the mission that we set out to achieve two years ago before the rebranding of the Fazz Financial Group, the longer name, is actually not different. 

We’re actually trying to really empower and push for financial access for businesses across Asia, and the mission is pretty much the same. It’s just that what we’re doing now is a lot more focused and a lot more consolidated. In the past, maybe there might have been some thoughts that Xfers or Payfazz, maybe we might be doing our own things.

But I think it’s very clear now, both internally and also to external people that we’re all moving towards same action, same goal, and same mission. That’s why it’s not really a repositioning to us, right? It’s more like a rebranding and we’re just giving internal folks and external people a good idea of what we’re doing with one story and one focus.

“We’re actually trying to really empower and push for financial access for businesses across Asia, and the mission is pretty much the same. It’s just that what we’re doing now is a lot more focused and a lot more consolidated.”

Paulo: It’s all about really putting it into one focus, as you mentioned, and Hendoko, anything to add to that?

Hendoko: I just want to echo what Zack has been saying. Basically what we are doing is — let’s say if we take a comparable from a ride hailing platform, we have been kind of operating like we have strong food delivery service, strong ride hailing service, but at first we are coming from four different entities, each with its own P&L, its own accountability.

And now we are being merged under one brand called Fazz, that has what you can call four SKUs or four products or four features. There are already strong and each have their captive users and we try to bring everyone and blend everyone into one ecosystem called Fazz. That’s basically our key challenge right now. We need to make sure all the personas under this one flag can be satisfied by our offering.

“…we try to bring everyone and blend everyone into one ecosystem called Fazz. That’s basically our key challenge right now. We need to make sure all the personas under this one flag can be satisfied by our offering.”

Paulo: You mentioned about personas being satisfied by that single offering. So that leads me into my next question is how does Fazz — if I were operating an SME and maybe say I was already using Payfazz. I was already part of that ecosystem initially. How does my experience now change, knowing that now I can access everything through one account. 

Hendoko: We may be talking about something more technical and practical, but basically, let’s say for our micro-SME persona, we will invest heavily on the mobile app experience basically. But for the high-SME persona, because the features of course are different, let’s say high-SME needing more around big money movement, automatic credit line, or maybe variation in payments acceptance. If we talk about payment rails, they tend to be heavily using the website dashboard. That’s if we are talking about front end service. 

What we are strong at is we are serving all these kinds of persona through a centralized backend. Let’s say the payment infrastructure, and lending infrastructure for micro-SME persona or high-SME persona is going to be under one infrastructure and we can replicate that into our Singapore market. 

So that’s basically our strong edge because everything have its own data point that right now on the existing stage, we need to leverage all the data point in the mass capacity and the most efficient way. That’s for me from Indonesia.

“What we are strong at is we are serving all these kinds of persona through a centralized backend. Let’s say the payment infrastructure, lending infrastructure for micro-SME persona or high-SME persona is going to be under one infrastructure and we can replicate that into our Singapore market.”

Zack: Again echoing Hendoko’s point, for the micro-business segment, and the agent segment that we have already been served by Payfazz,  we are very careful about the experience we want to provide them compared to our SME plus businesses, right?

So we need to be very focused on how we bring our business to them. But at the end of the day, our goal for the entire group really is about being able to serve their business needs, their financial operations needs, eventually in one single platform. But of course, again, like I mentioned, catering to the types of devices and types of interactions that they’re more used to.

“…our goal for the entire group really is about being able to serve their business needs, their financial operations needs, eventually in one single platform…but catering to the types of devices and types of interactions that they’re more used to.”

Paulo: I see that there is still variability in terms of what type of businesses you’re serving which Hendoko and you emphasized, and you already talked about how Modal Rakyat, for example, fits into the ecosystem. I think for Xfers it’s also pretty obvious, at least in my view, how that fits, and then obviously Payfazz as well. But how about StraitsX? You mentioned it’s a unified backend infrastructure. How does StraitsX fit into all of that?

Zack: StraitsX has been a product under Xfers for a long time, and I think how we see StraitsX and Web3 is that it is gonna be a core part of the future of finance, we’re not gonna be running away from it, and we want to make sure that we have a foot in Web3, starting from now and be part of how in the future people are doing business. 

As of now, of course it’s kind of a separate platform to Fazz Business and to Payfazz itself. But in the long run we do believe that some dispensary elements will make it into part the business account. Ultimately through just to one platform and one business account, you will be able to do both your transactions; you will be able to do web3 transactions. It’s going to be seamless.

“…how we see StraitsX and Web3 is that it is gonna be a core part of the future of finance…in the long run we do believe that some dispensary elements will make it into part the business account. Ultimately through just to one platform and one business account, you will be able to do both your transactions; you will be able to do web3 transactions. It’s going to be seamless.”

Singapore and Indonesia Parallels on the Fintech for Business Landscape

Paulo: That actually goes into the next talking point which is we see a lot more fintechs, I guess, Fazz being one of them, that’s really going towards this accumulation kind of trajectory, building ecosystems, building up the tech stack, becoming an operating software for the financial management of businesses.

So given this kind of trajectory, how do you see Fazz setting itself apart in the respective markets that it’s in right now, both in Singapore and Indonesia? Zack, you can start with the Singapore perspective.

Zack: We definitely see the entire space heating up. Every other day we are hearing of fintechs going to these end-to-end business accounts type model. And I think something that we have observed is that a lot of these companies, they start off with lending as their core business.

Whereas for Xfers, for Fazz, a lot of our background, especially in Singapore, has been based in payments. So we’ve been doing bank transfer payments, QR payments. That’s really our strong suit. We’ve been building this whole payments infrastructure for quite some time.

So one example of — we are probably the only business neo bank in Singapore that’s connected directly to the FAST network. If you go into the banking portal, you search for the list of banks to transfer to, Xfers is actually one of the selection. 

More particularly what this means for us is that from a unit economic perspective is we don’t depend on other people. Of course, it’s almost kind of like wholesale costs, and in terms of product quality and stability, that’s something that is fully in our control.

“…something that we have observed is that a lot of these [fintechs for business], they start off with lending as their core business. Whereas for Xfers, for Fazz, a lot of our background, especially in Singapore, has been based in payments…we are probably the only business neo bank in Singapore that’s connected directly to the FAST network…what this means for us is that from a unit economic perspective is we don’t depend on other people.” 

Paulo: I like what you brought up about the unit economics of it and how, if you spend on a customer getting through Payfazz or Modal Rakyat, they essentially already spend for getting that customer into the other products and services as well, which is really interesting.

How is it different from the Indonesia perspective? How do you see Fazz shaping up in terms of the landscape there and the market there?

Hendoko: In the Indonesian landscape, if we are operating on the FinTech, it’s not the kind of market where winner we take it all. If we reflect on the banking space also, let’s say in Indonesia there are 20…banks, something like that, and every bank has their own vertical. 

In operating in Indonesia, I always tell my team that we just need to be better than ourselves yesterday. We need to iterate on our features and we have set our ultra focus on what our strengths are. Basically at Modal Rakyat, we have some presence in the high-SME market and Payfazz is very strong in the rural market. All the payment data points are about the rural market, it’s just that Fazz warung rebranded into Fazz Agen.

So that’s our first investment to build the ecosystem. Basically, we are figuring out how to redirect all the payment from warungs or agents to our high-SMEs, how to introduce our warung to our FMCG, high-SMEs or our enterprise merchants in Model Rakyat, let’s say that is operating in telco, how do we redirect the distribution to our Fazz agents? So we tend to lock all the money flow, so the data point becomes more robust and robust, and we can tap into more personas.

“In the Indonesian landscape, if we are operating on the FinTech, it’s not the kind of market where winner we take it all…I always tell my team that we just need to be better than ourselves yesterday. We need to iterate on our features and we have set our ultra focus on what our strengths are…we tend to lock all the money flow, so the data point becomes more robust and robust, and we can tap into more personas.”

Paulo: I like what you mentioned about customers serving other customers within the Fazz ecosystem as well. And I also wanted to double down on this question about the differences or similarities between Singapore and Indonesia in terms of how you see business adoption of these kinds of tools.

On the one hand, you see more pressures of the FOMO effect — I have to use these kinds of digital tools, otherwise, I’ll be left behind — but at the same time, there’s also inflation and costs to take account for and how much businesses are spending on these kinds of software.

So how do you see these factors impacting business adoption of financial services platforms in Singapore and Indonesia?

Hendoko: In the Indonesian side, we are trying to get things stronger and stronger when it comes to payments and lending on our first SMB neobank app or SMB neobank dashboard. There will be of course multiple features, but we need to know what is our strongest feature, reflecting on our compounding strengths.

Based on our legacy business, payments and lending are the utmost focus for us in Indonesia, basically helping businesses get an app credit line in a more seamless way, get big money payments, supplier-specific payments. When we say payments, it’s very wide. 

What we are trying to create is a seamless payment service for small to medium enterprises to cater to their needs. So basically it’s totally different [depending on the customer]. If you’re a consumer, you care more about pricing, and how to move $200 in the cheapest way. 

Let’s say if you are looking at it from the SMB perspective, maybe you do not care so much about pricing; you care more about safety and how to move US$50K as far as possible, and if the supplier can verify the payment and you can get your inventory. 

That’s the kind of work that we are doing on daily basis, to identify this, to map this, and to make a strong SMB neobank app. We are focusing on payment and lending basically from the Indonesia side. 

“In the Indonesian side, we are trying to get things stronger and stronger when it comes to payments and lending on our first SMB neobank app or SMB neobank dashboard. There will be of course multiple features, but we need to know what is our strongest feature, reflecting on our compounding strengths.”

Paulo: I presume it’s also the same focus in Singapore, but maybe are there any differences in terms of the market segment that you’re focusing on in Singapore?

Zack: Especially for Fazz business, and we talking about fast business, right, it is really the same. I have to echo what Hendoko just mentioned that also points to something about our growth in the future to the rest of Southeast Asia, that the core business needs of these businesses when they’re doing their financial operations revolves a lot around receiving payments, making payments, and this is exactly what we are focused on and this is also our strength, making sure that we focus entirely giving them a 10x experience in terms of how they receive money, how they’re gonna be making payments, how can they grow their business, by providing them credit at the right basis.

“…this is exactly what we are focused on and this is also our strength, making sure that we focus entirely on giving them a 10x experience in terms of how they receive money, how they’re gonna be making payments, how can they grow their business, by providing them credit at the right basis.”

Paulo: And then speaking of local banks and local infrastructure, wanted to ask Hendoko, Indonesia recently released this data privacy law and we see a lot of regulation coming up with open finance and all of that. How do you see that impacting Fazz Business operations in Indonesia moving forward?

Hendoko: It is getting more challenging, but that’s what makes it interesting. There are more documents to read, more sprints to chase to cater to compliance needs, and more revamping, but Zack and I happen to be in this space already for five years.

I used to do banking, but I think five years is enough to make me realize that that’s what life is like in the startup space. So to echo Zack, let’s say, Indonesia, Indonesia is basically the biggest demographic in Southeast Asia. And some kind of other demographic actually operate in the same behavior as in Indonesia. 

But in Indonesia itself, our legacy business is focused on the small rural businesses, which is represented by Payfazz, which was rebranded into Fazz Agen, and Modal Rakyat itself is for the high SMEs and enterprises. That’s the blueprint, so we have more verticals to tap into basically.

But the middle SMBs are also so much and abundant. That’s what we are trying to achieve — catering to all these medium SMBs because we still need to win this vertical. So the next two years we will be focusing on that. So tapping into every vertical that we can call SMB, because SMB itself, even right now we have some clusters, and these have also been defined by the World Bank. So SMB has a very wide definition already.

“It is getting more challenging, but that’s what makes it interesting. There’s more documents to read, more sprints to chase to cater to compliance needs, more revamping, but Zack and I happens to be in this space already five years. I used to do banking, but I think five years is enough to make me realize that that’s what life is like in the startup space.” 

From Founding Team to Growth Stage Management: Professional Growth in Hypergrowth Venture-Backed Companies

Paulo: Putting your answer and Zack’s together really, at least in the near term — it’s really about consolidating things, making things more unified on a product level and also in terms of like your approach to different market segments. And so you talked about having to learn over the past five years how to get used to it. And all these different changes in the landscape, what are the other learnings that you’ve had over the evolution of Fazz as leaders? Anything that you’ve had to let go of in terms of misconceptions or assumptions over the past five years?

Hendoko: I think by being unified as Fazz, by merging with Xfers, as a leader on my organization, I have had so much skill learning. Basically, if you see Xfers from day one, they have a regional presence so they have more international color. They have software engineers coming from Facebook and it’s like a regular occurrence already in Xfers’ organization.

So I needed to bring myself to become more international. That’s the first key. And that’s also interesting because in a melting pot, suddenly we argue more. That’s something that we need to sacrifice. The sprint time is needed more, but this kind of melting pot is interesting because everybody is affecting each other’s colors. So that’s my point of view.

“Basically, if you see Xfers from day one, they have a regional presence so they have more international color. They have software engineers coming from Facebook and it’s like a regular occurrence already in Xfers’ organization. So I needed to bring myself to become more international.”

Paulo: How about you, Zack? Anything that you’ve had to learn?

Zack: I think my learning is similar to Hendoko’s, but maybe a slightly different perspective in that, the way that we used to do things, it used to be that as a small team we try to accomplish a lot and try to do a lot on our own. 

And at the current scale of the growth of Fazz, the expectations of how much we go and how fast we go, it’s a very different level from back when we were much more of a startup. At the current moment, something that I really have to unlearn is trying to do everything, trying to make sure that my hand is down in everything, and right now where I’m willing to develop myself on becomes more of how do I grow the team, how do I build the best team, build the right team. I cannot be the smartest person in the room anymore. I should not be. 

“…something that I really have to unlearn is trying to do everything, trying to make sure that my hand is down in everything and right now where I’m willing to develop myself on becomes more of how do I grow the team, how do I build the best team, build the right team. I cannot be the smartest person in the room anymore. I should not be.”

Paulo: I mean, you have Hendoko now. The two of you are helping each other out. Speaking of which I wanted to ask, I was curious, is there anything that Zack learned from Hendoko since you guys started working together on Fazz, and maybe Hendoko, anything that you learned from Zack?

Zack: What I learned from Hendoko is so far Hendoko has been a great person to work with in that when working with him, he is able to put things across in a very direct and sharp manner. In a very truthful manner, but at the same time, making sure that the atmosphere doesn’t get awkward. He always tells you the truth and is super appreciative about that, but in a way that people can accept. It’s a special skill, really.

“[Hendoko] is able to put things across in a very direct and sharp manner. In a very truthful manner, but at the same time, making sure that the atmosphere doesn’t get awkward.”

Paulo: How about you Hendoko anything that you learned from Zack, having worked with him?

Hendoko: Back to echoing my previous point, I learned how to make this because like, when it was still Modal Rakyat the power of creation is very strong on my side. I can direct the sprint with a 10-minute meeting because the organization is smaller. If I want this feature, I can discuss it with my CTO in like 10 minutes manner, and I get the priority on the sprint that I want. Because we grew bigger, we have some standards of doing a sprint, et cetera, so we need to accommodate and be more patient basically. And that’s what I learned from Zack. Also, how to be a product manager in a more peaceful manner, and how to understand how sprints work, I learned from Zack, because Zack is a product manager. 

“When it was still Modal Rakyat the power of creation is like very strong on my side. I can direct the sprint with a 10 minute meeting because the organization is smaller. If I want this feature, I can discuss it with my CTO in like 10 minutes manner, and I get the priority on the sprint that I want. Because we grew bigger, we have some standards of doing sprint, et cetera, so we need to accommodate and be more patient basically.”

Future of Financial Services for Businesses

Paulo: And for our listeners, Zack and Hendoko did not give me anything to ask that question. But I was just really curious. I also wanted to talk about how you see businesses growing through Fazz, because something that we see especially with these tech stack kind of like platforms, regardless if it’s fintech or commerce, is that you see the customers also growing with the business, right? How do you see that happening through the Fazz platform? Do you already see that happening now or maybe some examples or stories that you guys might want to share?

Hendoko: This model is more relevant in the Indonesian market. We actually have so many specimens of like especially with warungs, how we put a working capital for this merchant that are actually having difficulty or are having some basic defects, and we kind of elevate the business and help the family [running the business].

We have many specimens but right now we are trying to create some mechanism to track that down because maybe if we do another forecast, in another six months, I can show you some systematic reports already of us measuring that kind of impact. We are still progressing towards that because we need to create a division to track this with a better method and better grading.

“We actually have so many specimens of like especially with warungs, how we put a working capital for this merchant that are actually having difficulty or are having some basic defects, and we kind of elevate the business and help the family [running the business].”

Paulo: It sounds exciting. I think something to look forward to. And another reason to bring back Fazz on the podcast to share those interesting data points. And maybe even concrete stories as well. And so before we head into Rapid Fire Round, I wanted to ask, as we’re all familiar, especially for startups, that we are in this capital scare environment, with rising costs and all those challenges being faced, not just by venture-backed startups, but also SMEs in the region. How do you see these challenges evolving over the next five years and what kind of role will Fazz Business play to help these businesses move forward?

Zack: So from my point of view, I think in the market pretty much, I think nobody can really say that they’ve gotten the product right for all types of businesses and Fazz because of how, like Hendoko mentioned, we are kind of like a “House of Fintech”, we have already interfaced with a lot of different types of businesses of different sizes of different industries, we’re in that unique position to be the ones to get this right for Southeast Asia and hopefully be able to go into the rest of Asia as well in the coming years.

“…because of how, like Hendoko mentioned, we are kind of like a “House of Fintech”, we have already interfaced with a lot of different types of businesses of different sizes of different industries, we’re in that unique position to be the ones to get this right for Southeast Asia…”

Paulo: And Hendoko you talked a lot about data in our conversation, I remember you mentioned there were data points a lot and being able to capture a lot of those things across the market. What are you seeing now in terms of the challenges in Indonesia that businesses are facing, and how are you seeing that evolve? And what role will Fazz play in helping solve those challenges for businesses?

Hendoko: Because we have certain personas to work with, basically, let’s say, the challenge over the past three months is oil price, something like that, right? Oil prices may be affecting the high-SME persona because of the way they are doing business so the business ties closely to shipping or some kind of imports.

So oil prices have a direct impact, but for the micro-SME persona, It’s actually doesn’t have that much impact on them. So the more effectively we are doing this, the more verticals that we can tap into. It’s kind of like a zero-sum game if you get what I mean. The number [of businesses] is there, but the variable that is on the plus or on the negative equity is changing. The factors keep changing, but the world is still there, still X number of businesses, right? 

It’s some kind of a zero-sum game. So basically we just need to crack more vertical, more persona and we can tap ultra micro-SME, micro-SME, middle-SMB, high-SME, and enterprise so we can find that kind of balance. So that’s the journey that we are progressing at and we will be stronger and stronger by cracking more verticals under this one flag.  

“…basically we just need to crack more vertical, more persona and we can tap ultra micro-SME, micro-SME, middle-SMB, high-SME, enterprise so we can find that kind of balance. So that’s what the journey that we are progressing at and we will be stronger and stronger by cracking more verticals under this one flag.”

Rapid Fire Round

Podcast/book/resource you would recommend to your customers? 

Zack: On my end, I like this resource for businesses called Stratechery by Ben Thompson. It’s really great to just kind of like tap in the mind of how you think about business strategy, especially in the startup world.

Hendoko: I prefer the book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz. Sometimes I also give the book to my customer because like I said my legacy is coming from Modal Rakyat. We kind of have a strong presence in high-SME vertical. So basically, high-SMEs can be B2B, business, government contracts, oil and gas.

So I can find some relatable topics in that book. I also go to that book if I feel overstretched or something like that, just to feel like we are in the same situation basically, if I read that book, even though I never met the author, but it’s like that. For the entrepreneurial journey, it’s a good book in my view.

How far away would you say is your current work at Fazz different from your childhood dream?

Zack: For myself, this is actually super far, when I was a child, my dream was to be a singer, to be a celebrity. So very far away. Something to leave maybe for retirement. 

Hendoko: I actually can echo something from my childhood because my father was a small trader merchant in like small local market. It might sound cliche, but I spent my school holidays helping my father to man the small shop. So my dream was kind of simple. I wanted to be like some other trader, who is my father’s supplier. So in the supply chain, it’s like the medium supplier of what my parents sell because he’s still very respectable and very impactful. So echoing with my existing work, but because mostly me, Zack, Hendra, or Tianwei, are basically entrepreneurs backed by venture capital or venture-backed. So it’s kind of at the same situation as what I imagine. 

Favorite travel destination in Southeast Asia? 

Hendoko: Singapore is my favorite destination. If you are talking Southeast Asia for me, Singapore. If we move further, I love Tokyo also, but Singapore is very similar. Let’s say I want to eat Malaysian food, I go to a Singapore hawker. And every time I want to eat Southeast Asian food, everything is in Singapore. It might sound cliche, but I love the seamlessness. It’s like I can finish ten items on my checklist by going to one country.

Zack: For myself, maybe this is a little bit more based on my own experiences, so for myself, just because I used to travel to Bangkok, a little bit more for leisure. So it’s the place that I manage to plan more short trips away to, like the small cities, a little bit more adventurous and seeing interesting sites. Bangkok has been my favorite so far, but really excited to be able to do more now that things have kind of like opened.

How do you de-stress?

Zack: For myself, I like to de-stress by engaging my mind in some strategy games. I’ll say I’m an old school gamer, I tend to go back to “Magic The Gathering.” I think those older folks might know and may have heard of it before.  

Hendoko: For me, to de-stress is to have some good coffee to sip around with a green view, like a hill situation if you can imagine, green and cold weather and you can have a good coffee. You can detach from your business as usual. Thankful that usually those kinds of places are like 45-minute drive from Jakarta, so it’s still affordable.