You are going on call with Pratyush Prasanna, Group CEO of Flip, one of Indonesia’s largest consumer fintech platforms serving more than 13 million users primarily for their money movement needs, among other financial services.

With 20+ years of executive and leadership experience in consumer and fintech companies including Paytm, Poynt, and Gojek, he joined Flip as MD then CEO finding a new mission in building the next epoch making company in Indonesia, inspired by the values and mission of Flip’s founders.

Timestamps

(01:38) Flip’s Impact on Indonesian Fintech;

(02:58)  Customer-Centric Innovations at Flip;

(06:53) Pratyush’s journey joining Flip;

(13:02) Pratyush’s takeaways from being acquired by Paytm;

(15:07) India vs Indonesia fintech — where are the competitive advantages?;

(20:06) Insights from his time at Gojek;

(21:51) Future of Fintech in Indonesia;

(25:47) Guiding principles for Pratyush’s leadership;

About who you are on call with:

Pratyush Prasanna is the Group CEO of Flip.id, one of Indonesia’s leading fintech groups. He brings a wealth of experience in the payments industry, with a proven track record of scaling businesses and driving innovation in emerging markets.

Prior to joining Flip.id, Pratyush served as the Head of Merchant Payments at GoTo Financial, where he played a pivotal role in expanding their merchant payment solutions and driving adoption among Indonesian businesses of all sizes. His strategic vision and leadership helped GoTo Financial achieve significant growth in the highly competitive Indonesian market.

Before his tenure at GoTo Financial, Pratyush was the General Manager of Asia at Poynt, a leading point-of-sale terminal provider. Based in San Francisco, Singapore, and Bangalore, he oversaw product development, partner acquisition, and market expansion across a diverse range of countries in Asia, including India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Pratyush’s career also includes a significant role at Paytm, India’s most widely used payments app. As Vice President of Business and Product, he witnessed Paytm’s remarkable growth. With his strategic vision and proven ability to execute, Pratyush is committed to expanding Flip’s reach and impact, ensuring that all Indonesians have access to fair financial services.

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Directed by Paulo Joquiño

Produced by Paulo Joquiño

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Insignia Ventures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ fund. Any and all opinions shared in this episode are solely personal thoughts and reflections of the guest and the host.

Transcript

Transcripts have been edited for clarity.

What’s Exciting About One of Indonesia’s Longest Running Fintechs

Paulo: Hi folks, welcome back to On Call with Insignia, where you go on call with leaders innovating the future of Southeast Asia and other emerging markets’ digital and internet economy. I’m your host, Paulo Aquino, and we’re back with Season Seven of our show.

For this particular episode, I’m really happy to be joined by one of our portfolio CEOs. He joined this portfolio company not too long ago, but he’s had quite a breadth of experience in fintech and payments across different geographies and companies.

I’m pleased to be joined by none other than Pratyush Prasanna, who is the current Group CEO of Flip. Thank you so much for joining us early in the morning. I believe you’re calling from Singapore today.

Pratyush: Thanks, Paulo, for inviting me. Glad to be here. Yes, it is a bit early, but that’s fine—I’m a morning person.

Paulo: I’m a morning person as well, so I always like to get these calls early.

Just a little bit on Pratyush before we head into our discussion. He’s led many different tech companies over the years. A serial entrepreneur and tech CXO, he started with a mobile solutions company in India, which was acquired by Paytm.

He then became a VP at Paytm, started an AI company, joined Poynt (which was later acquired by GoDaddy), became Head of Asia for Poynt, and eventually joined Gojek around the pandemic in 2020 as Senior Vice President for Merchant Payments.

Most recently, he joined Flip as MD and then became CEO over the past year.

Quite a career, and I’m excited to dig a little deeper into some of the learnings and what Pratyush is most excited about when it comes to Flip.

So let’s start with that. It’s 2025, and Flip has been around for quite some time—eight or nine years. It has really seen the Indonesian fintech landscape evolve and has had an impact on Indonesian payment culture.

What are you most excited about at Flip, having joined the company over the past year?

Pratyush: Thanks, Paulo. As you rightly mentioned, it’s an interesting year. 2025 will be significant for a few reasons.

One is that Flip is at the cusp of becoming a path-breaking company—and I’ll tell you why. More importantly, I believe companies can do a lot of things, but it really works when the macros align.

In Indonesia, the macros are quite well aligned for us to leverage and go from here. Flip has long been in the consumer space, helping people do P2P transfers and send money to each other.

That forms our base. On top of that, we’ve also been successful in giving users multiple avenues to spend and ensuring they can do more transactions through us.

Generally speaking, I don’t think of businesses just in terms of transactions. I think about how we can add significant, incremental value to our users’ lives.

At Flip, we have three business units: consumer, B2B, and lending. In each of these, we look at what customer scenarios we are addressing through our products.

It’s not just about increasing transaction volume or value, but about solving core issues for our customers and merchants. That’s how we look outward.

Now, if you look inward, Indonesia is at the cusp of growth. There’s political stability, which is crucial for any country to grow.

There’s also intent from regulators to grow the industry and create openness for fair competition. That’s important because it ensures a level playing field.

If you innovate and keep your customers and merchants happy, you will grow. Indonesia has launched several game-changing initiatives in the past three to four years.

BI-FAST, for example, is going to disrupt and make life easier for everyday Indonesians. Other initiatives include crackdowns on fraud and illegal activity, and efforts to ensure efficient money flow.

These help real companies build bigger businesses, just like we saw in India or China.

Last but not least, Indonesia is a large market—280 million people. The GDP growth also justifies this optimism.

McKinsey research shows that when GDP crosses the $5,000 mark per capita annually, people begin to have surplus income that can be reinvested.

We want to be in that phase—not only helping people make payments, but also helping them save, invest, and grow. Whether they are customers or merchants.

To give you a specific example, many users asked, “If I can transfer money to someone in Indonesia, why can’t I transfer money to Paulo in Singapore?”

From a technology perspective, domestic transfers are quite different from international ones. But consumers don’t think that way.

They just ask, “Why can I send money to person X in Jakarta, but not to person Y in Singapore?” So we said, “Okay, let’s look into it.”

In three to four months, we released our own cross-border remittance product.

Paulo: This is FlipGlobe, right?

Pratyush: Exactly. FlipGlobe. But the origin of that was simple—we were constantly listening to our customers.

They asked, “Why can’t I transfer money to someone in Malaysia or Singapore?” So the key is to keep listening to customers, understand their pain points, and build products without letting the complexity hold you back.

Some problems might be too complex to solve right away. But if we can find the right solutions, customers will stick with us.

One more data point before I hand it back to you: because we’ve been so customer-obsessed, our NPS is 89. I’m quite proud of that. It’s one of the reasons I joined the company. That kind of NPS means we’re doing a really good job at enabling and supporting our customers.

Paulo: That’s a great way to set up our conversation.

This mindset of being customer-obsessed and focused on product—regardless of how far the company has grown—continues the tradition started by the founders with their first MVP. It’s something that has stayed even through your leadership.

You talked about FlipGlobe, which has now been running for a few years. It’s great to know it’s really become market-leading in remittances. And of course, the NPS you mentioned is a clear sign of what attracted you to Flip in the first place.

Joining Flip: Pratyush’s Journey and Learnings from Pioneering AI for Fintech in India

Paulo: Speaking of that, I also wanted to get into your decision to join Flip and take it to the next level. Maybe you can start with how you got to know about Flip and how you got to know Ari.

Apart from the NPS, what were the other reasons that led you to join? Let’s start with that.

Pratyush: So before Flip, I was with Gojek. I left Gojek and was trying to figure out what to do next. Then Ari reached out and said, “While you’re figuring things out, why don’t you help us with our strategy?”

I said, “Okay, sure. Let’s talk about what you do.” I knew about Flip as a company and had used it as a user, but I didn’t know the breadth of what the company was doing. Obviously, as an outsider, it’s difficult to know.

Once Ari and I started talking, it became an interesting conversation. I said, “Let’s work together for some time and see where it goes.”

Within a week of me trying to help Ari, he said, “Let’s forget about the advisor role—please join us full-time. We can do some really cool stuff together.”

I said, “Okay, that’s interesting. But let me talk to a few more people, including the other founders.”

So I spoke to Lukman and Anjar as well. What I saw was that typically, companies have a tagline or motto and then do something completely different. But in Flip’s case, the tagline is Fair financial services for every Indonesian.

I saw a real intent from all three founders to help ordinary people do things better. It reflects in every one of our products.

We consistently try to reduce operational costs, increase efficiency, ensure money reaches users on time, and introduce products that are truly relevant to customers. We also use a lot of machine learning to target the right product to the right person.

Over the course of a month, I gave specific feedback and learned about the broader scope of what we could do. After speaking with our investors and key people in the company, I joined the board as a Managing Director.

I continued in that role for about six months. Then, by mutual consent with Ari, Lukman, Anjar, and our investors, I took over as CEO.

To give you an idea—as I mentioned, we have three lines of business: Consumer, Flip for Business, and Lending.

Ari and I made sure the structure was optimized for delivery. Ari leads the consumer business, I handle the business segment, and a gentleman named Hari leads the lending unit. All three of them report to me.

Strategically, the three of us work closely together to do what’s best for the company. We made sure the structure enabled faster delivery while remaining coherent and collaborative.

With Ari’s support, along with the other founders and investors, we built a structure that allows us to fire on all cylinders, so to speak.

Last but not least, I think any new person joining a company is like an organ transplant. Thankfully, I didn’t come in as CEO on day zero. I took over in month six. It was a gradual process.

We made several structural changes to ease the transition. People had time to adjust, and I got to know who was responsible for what. It was good that we took our time—with the support of the founders and investors—and that’s how it all worked out.

Paulo: You mentioned that with this new structure, you’re able to, as you said, “fire on all cylinders,” deliver faster, and have specific leaders focused on the three branches of the group. That creates more efficiency for the company.

I’m curious—how has this new endeavor impacted you as a leader? Has anything changed about your leadership style since joining Flip?

Pratyush: Every company is new and has its own nuances. I’ve run my own company before, so I know the challenges. Running a company is like drinking from a firehose. There are multiple things coming at you at high speed, and you have to be ready for it.

As I said, every company has its own nuances. But I had the distinct advantage of having run my own company earlier—and of having worked in Indonesia through Gojek.

So the challenge was much easier to handle. If even one of those factors hadn’t been there, the learning curve would have been much steeper. I was lucky those experiences came earlier, which made it relatively easy to step in and take over this role.

That said, every company still has its challenges. You have to decide what kind of technology to build, what to invest in, what not to, and what processes to establish.

Ari and I focused a lot on ensuring the team constantly evolves and upgrades. That’s helped us address many of these challenges. It has still been a significant learning experience. Flip is not a small company—we have 400 people across different parts of Indonesia.

We have offices in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, and a few people based elsewhere. We were also coming out of COVID, so we had the chance to return to the office—which is much more optimal.

Just to give you an example: last January, we moved into a new office as people returned. It’s been spectacular. Our output and the way we work have returned to what they were pre-COVID, yielding better results.

That said, I’m still learning. I come across new things every day. But as we continue to upgrade, I think we’ll be able to handle most of the challenges life throws at us.

Paulo: Before we get into some of the “new stuff”—which I’d love to talk about—I also wanted to go through your quote-unquote “discography” of a career and some highlights.

One of the early highlights was when, after several years of working in big tech, you founded your own company, which was then acquired by Paytm.

I want to focus on that acquisition experience. You were a first-time founder at the time, right? What was the big takeaway from that journey of getting acquired?

Pratyush: This was around 2013—more than 10 years ago now. It was quite interesting.

We were actually looking to raise a round for that company. Some of the investors considering us had Paytm in their portfolio. They asked me to talk to Vijay, just to get his gut feel on the business.

Vijay spoke to me and said, “Why are you doing all this? Just join us and let’s do what Alipay and Tencent did in China.” That’s how the conversation started. Vijay—if you’ve met him—is a classic reality distortion guy.

Paulo: You have to be a reality distortion kind of guy to build a company like Paytm.

Pratyush: Exactly. It turned out to be a very good deal. The investors were happy. The board was happy. But beyond that, it was about the ambition to change the world. 

When I joined Paytm, they had 2 million users. When I left, we had 100 million downloads. We actually changed reality to a large extent.

Paulo: What was the company that got acquired doing?

Pratyush: The company was called PlusTXT—spelled P-L-U-S-T-X-T. It was a text messaging app, very similar to WhatsApp, but in local languages.

The idea was that India has hundreds of languages. English is the most common, but most people don’t speak it. We wanted to enable messaging in local languages.

Vijay’s point was, “You’ve seen how WeChat built payments around chat. Why don’t you join us and do that for India?” And that worked out well for both sides.

Paulo: You mentioned when you joined Paytm it had 2 million users, and when you left, it had 100 million downloads.

So you’ve seen that explosion firsthand in India. When it comes to payments, many people point to UPI as a model for infrastructure in a country’s digital payment system.

What takeaways did you bring into Indonesia from your experience in India?

Pratyush: I think India was a pathbreaker in many ways. China had the closed model—Alipay and WeChat. India started with individual companies like Paytm and PhonePe building their own stacks.

But the regulators were clear: we needed interoperability and to reduce costs. In fact, transaction cost in India is zero. That was visionary. It allowed the common person to adopt digital payments because it was accessible and free.

So UPI was launched. It went through many iterations, incumbents changed, but it was adapted to the country’s needs. That model has inspired others. Indonesia had the benefit of hindsight. I think they’ve done an even better job, actually.

BI-FAST, for example, has rolled out well and is starting to see adoption. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes pervasive—for both consumers and merchants. Every company should take advantage of it. We certainly will.

I also think new businesses are created when seismic shifts like this happen. They disrupt the incumbents—on both the consumer and merchant side. And that’s a good thing. Because in the end, the everyday Indonesian will benefit. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to what’s coming.

Paulo: I was curious to know your view on how infrastructure like UPI or BI-FAST reshapes the competitive landscape.

Before these kinds of infrastructure came in, competition was often driven by pricing or cost. But now that the landscape is more level, what becomes the competitive dimension for companies and new entrants?

What are you competing on—is it more about product experience, or are there other aspects to it?

Pratyush: I think there will be three things. The first is obviously product experience. That’s what really matters to customers and merchants, and for me, it’s non-negotiable. It’s a hygiene factor—if you don’t have a great product experience, you’re in trouble. No question about it.

The second is efficiency and new business models. I don’t yet know what those new models will be, but historically, they always emerge during transitions like this.

We have a general idea—not just we at Flip, but we as an industry—but it will evolve. It won’t be the same as India. It won’t be the same as China. So the jury’s still out on what those new business models will look like or how they’ll create new businesses.

The third, and equally important, is regulatory compliance. Most fintechs like to think they’re banks—but they’re not.

Banks are great because they’ve figured out over hundreds of years how to understand their customers, offer loans, collect repayments, and manage savings accounts.

They also know when to reach out to customers for credit or other services. Fintechs typically take a sliver of that activity—like lending or payments—and try to do it really well.

But as you know, globally there have been multiple instances where fintechs were not regulatory compliant.

Now, regulators are reframing laws to match the new reality of fintechs and real-time payments.

It’s imperative—not just for us, but for any company—to stay on top of that.

There was a great article by Vijay a few days ago that said: innovation has to be built around regulatory compliance—not the other way around.

All that Silicon Valley talk about “move fast and break things”—yeah, that doesn’t actually work here. Unlike Instagram, where you can break whatever you want, in fintech—or finance as a whole—you’re dealing with other people’s money.

You can’t break stuff. And you definitely cannot go against the rules of the land. That’s something I’ve built as almost a philosophy inside the company. We will always be clean. We will not do shady stuff—ever.

One thing you can be assured of is that you’ll never see Flip involved in any of those “non-cool” activities, as we call them.

From India to Indonesia: Insights from Pratyush’s Gojek Experience

Paulo: I also wanted to focus on your time at Gojek, which was your initial introduction to Indonesia.

What were your first impressions of Indonesia’s tech scene—especially in terms of work culture? How do Indonesians work together, and how did that impact your own leadership style coming from India?

Pratyush: It was an eye-opening experience for me. I like to think that I actually worked at three different companies during my time at Gojek.

Why? Because the first was Gojek itself. Then came the merger with Tokopedia. Then we went through the IPO and all the post-IPO changes.

All three phases are experiences I truly treasure. Gojek is arguably one of the best tech companies in Indonesia—no question about it.

With Nadiem, Kevin, and all the business leaders, Gojek created a culture that felt very much like a Silicon Valley company, while still addressing Indonesian needs—whether for transportation, food delivery, or payments.

They were hugely successful at that. When I joined, I didn’t see much difference from working at a cutting-edge Indian company—or even a Bay Area company.

It was run with that level of professionalism. Most of the founders also had experience either working in the U.S. or for U.S.-based companies.

Gojek really shaped my understanding of how to work in Indonesia and how to cater to local needs. It also had a high level of consumer obsession, which is why many of its products took off quickly.

So overall, my experience at Gojek was fantastic in terms of learning about Indonesia, working on the ground, and shaping company culture.

Future of Digital Payments in Indonesia

Paulo: It’s quite interesting how Flip has preceded a lot of fintech evolution in Indonesia. It preceded Curious, BI-FAST, a lot of the eKYC regulation—and has played a part in all those developments.

As someone who was first a user, then a board member, and now CEO of Flip, how would you sum up Flip’s impact on the Indonesia fintech journey?

You already touched on it at the start of our conversation, but I’d love to hear more about its role in the next few years.

Pratyush: I think there are two angles to look at it from. One is: what can we do? And the second is: what is the country or the market ready for?

Digital payments and digital transactions are here to stay. There’s no question about it. It’s a one-way road that Indonesia has already embarked on. Some countries like China and India started earlier, of course.

What we—and others in the market—can do is make sure we enable that journey better. A lot of our investors, potential investors, or even partners ask us, “How do you differentiate versus your competitors?”

My general answer is: all of us can be successful, as long as we build good products. Why is that important? 

Because if you look at India, Paytm is big—but so is PhonePe, and so is Google Pay.

Paulo: So it’s not necessarily a one-player-wins-all kind of thing.

Pratyush: Exactly. “One player wins all” is an easy mental construct, but it doesn’t happen in real life. In real life, multiple players always win.

At Flip, we want to stay relevant. That’s very important. We want to stay close to our customers, understand their needs, and quickly evolve our products around them.

Since we’re small, we can move faster than most. At the same time, we want to make sure we’re doing all of that in a fair way—which is core to who we are.

As long as we stay true to those three principles, we’ll be fine. We’ll make money and grow into a big company.

Paulo: I’m curious—where do the marginal differences come into play?

You mentioned experience and transaction efficiency. Specifically, what aspects of customer experience will really drive differentiation? Is it things like settlement speed for merchants? Any clues you can share?

Pratyush: Marginal differences definitely matter. For example, one of the biggest differences is always cost.

People—especially those with lower incomes—are very cost-sensitive, and that’s totally fair. That said, there will eventually be a standardized cost level. Nobody will be able to go below it without losing money.

So over time, cost won’t be a competitive factor anymore—it will get standardized across the industry.

The second factor will be efficiency. How fast can you transfer money or complete a transaction? What’s your transaction failure rate?

That’s an area we can definitely optimize—and so can others. But this game will be won by technology. That’s why, and I can’t name names, a lot of banks actually use our infrastructure for payments.

We operate at such a large consumer scale that our systems are 99.99% up. If banks try to build that infrastructure themselves, especially the smaller ones, they may not reach that level of reliability.

Technology is where we’ll continue to differentiate. The third factor is qualitative: do we have our ears to the ground for customer needs?

Take FlipGlobe, for instance. That was a real eye-opener. Customers were saying, “I need to send money to Singapore. How can I do that better?”

Our customer base is arguably larger than most remittance companies. So we asked, how can we leverage that user base for a product customers are asking for? Being honest, staying close to the customer, and building for their needs—that’s where the marginal gains will come in.

And lastly, we’re fair in terms of cost.

Where a seasoned entrepreneur draws resilience

Paulo: To wrap up our conversation—we’ve talked a lot about what you’ve seen across the industry over the years that you’ve been in fintech, as well as your own experiences growing and leading companies.

Whenever you’re faced with a tough challenge, is there a particular past experience or story that you draw hope or strength from as an entrepreneur and leader?

Pratyush: Maybe I’ll share it offline with you, but I actually have a document called Working with Pratyush.

It’s a document I’ve kept since my first job. It’s more about how I’ve evolved over time and what my philosophies are as a person.

One of those philosophies—there are several—but the main one is what’s commonly referred to as strong opinions, loosely held.

It means that you form an opinion based on experience, reading, and research. But you hold that opinion loosely.

Why? Because there might be data you haven’t seen, or perspectives and experiences you haven’t encountered, that could prove your opinion wrong—or offer something better.

The phrase strong opinions, loosely held actually originates, I believe, from the Oracle at Delphi. Rulers were told not to be biased or too married to a particular philosophy or principle.

Even if something seems right, it may not be. You have to stay open to alternatives—because that’s how thought processes and companies evolve.

So that’s something I hold very close. We go in with conviction when building new technology, but we stay open to contrarian views and other people’s insights.

Paulo: Is there a specific example where that has played out—something you can share with us?

Pratyush: Take Twitter, for example. It was originally part of a company called Odeo, which was an ad network. They carved it out—and Twitter became a path-breaking, epoch-making company. Totally different from the original business.

Or take Berkshire Hathaway. It started as a completely different company and then became one of the biggest—if not the biggest—investment firms in the world.

They began with an operating company. One of the co-founders, Charlie Munger, who passed away last year, had strong opinions, loosely held as one of his core tenets.

He believed in having a strong point of view—but being willing to change it. But again, the key is also to have strong opinions. Because if you don’t, people will walk all over you. You need a perspective—one that’s grounded in facts, data, experience, and critical thinking.

Paulo: Yeah, and I think that ties back to how we started the conversation—with customer obsession and listening to pain points.

You never really know what you’ll uncover. That whole story about FlipGlobe is a great example of that in Flip’s journey.

And who knows—I’m not sure if Ari ever imagined, back when he started the company in 2015, that you’d end up doing remittances, merchant payments, and even lending.

It’s definitely a much larger and more impactful company than what it started out as. And that’s really the magic of tech and startups.