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I’ve always maintained that the biggest competitors to a startup are often the paper process they replace. And especially in big banks, the incumbent is typically the way they’ve always done things.

What I love about Jessica, Ankit and the whole Planto team is they’ve been grinding at this for 8 years now and they’re still pushing banks forward in one of the most important financial capitals in the world. And have remained curious the whole way.

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Hold on to your hats, it’s a long one (well not compared to Friedman) but we touch on the work, how they got here and taking a gamble when you have the chance.

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Transcript

Ankit Suri (00:00)
I would say the top three, four banks in all markets. I think it's really about bringing that mindset shift for them because if you already have all the data, why is it that SMEs are still underserved? I think it's really about then, they not asking the right questions? Are they not looking at the right data sets?

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Jonathan Nguyen (00:16)
Back to another episode of the Unsensible Podcast where we speak to the lunatics who defy their Asian parents and decide to become entrepreneurs instead of being doctors. And today I'm joined by two such lunatics, Jessica and Ankit from PLANTO. I am not going to give them a big intro. What I'm going to do is I'm going to make them pitch their startup in 30 seconds and then we can hear exactly what they think it is that they do. So take it away guys.

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Ankit Suri (00:52)
I can go first, Jessica, you can go after. We can do our own 30 second version. Let's see how different it is. It'll be fun. But at Planto we help financial institutions with digital banking as well as open banking related solutions that help them transform and serve their customers in an extremely personalized way, bringing financial inclusion to the customers it.

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Jessica Liu (01:14)
Maybe I'll give it a shot. Very similar to Ankit, but I guess for us, we're a fintech company in the intersection between AI and also open banking or in Hong Kong we call IADS. And we're trying to help banks solve the problem they have when it comes down to engaging their customers and cross-selling digitally with the power of data, especially consolidated data from different financial institutions under the open banking model.

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Jonathan Nguyen (01:43)
So I have had some experience with version one of your software, I guess, where you can download the Planto app from the app store. It pulls in very usefully for me. It pulled in my American Express account and my HSBC account. I could see it all in one place. You guys have done a lot since then. So what does the tech do now? Is it still a...you know, piece of kit or are you selling direct to banks now?

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Ankit Suri (02:15)
I feel like we look very different from what we, when we started. And, and I think we've sort of evolved so much over, over all those years. And I don't think we would be in the stage where we are today if we hadn't gone through, you know, that very first version that you just described. But you're right. We started out helping consumers with this mobile app, and really a personal finance ecosystem to help them manage their finances. Over the years, we have built tech for consumers and we have realized the value that this tech can give to customers. So instead of going direct to consumers now, we are now partnering with financial institutions in helping them leverage the same technology, helping them the data that they have to unlock all these...unlock the same value that we saw within our customer base. So instead of us approaching millions of customers directly ourselves, we are now doing it via financial institutions.

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Jessica Liu (03:15)
Yeah, I just wanted to supplement there. I Ankit explained it perfectly. But for us, know, I think like a lot of different founders globally, what we're always trying to do is solve problems, whether it's for end consumers or financial institutions. And we realized we were in the unique position to actually solve that problem for financial institutions, because during our 2C or B2C kind of business, we were able to get a lot of different or access to different types of data because like Jonathan, you've used our app before, we do a lot of aggregation for different financial institutions.

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And our unique access meant that we were able to develop AI models that are actually built on that kind of data, which then banks started to realize it's very useful, especially when markets like Hong Kong are starting this whole open banking IADS thing. So that's where in the beginning we saw a problem with two consumers, but as we kind of became bigger and exposed to more financial institutions who were like, dude, you guys have a great app. What can we do together? We knew there was another problem we can solve, which then can impact even more and customers through these financial institutions as well.

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Jonathan Nguyen (04:25)
A lot of ways, I mean, it makes total sense, that progression. I wonder when talk to founders in Asia specifically, usually they're career changers it's a second career they've had to...probably 10 years in a previous job to raise enough capital to kick something off.

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You guys are more like Silicon Valley founders where you're a lot younger perhaps had jobs before but haven't spent a huge separate career doing something else was the driving force behind thinking, you know, you're in a comfortable job. Why go and do this insanity? Why risk, the capital you've saved? Why risk attempting something like this when you've got so many other opportunities open to you.

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Jessica Liu (05:26)
So maybe I'll start here. So before Planto I was actually in a boutique kind of PE firm. And I think as you've kind of worked for more than four five years, you kind of realize what your personality is like. Some people fit very well in the corporate culture while others like myself, we kind of, and I think I'm sure Ankit, who has even more of an entrepreneurial spirit, feel that you kind of just want to do something that is more meaningful, more impactful. And I think that kind of drove me to want to take that risk, especially when you're also a bit younger.

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What's interesting that you also mentioned is I love the beginning when you said about, what you know, the lunatics, why are we, you know, founders when our parents want us to be something a lot more stable, right? In my case, I was very different from what my parents expected. So they never knew I actually kind of gave up my stable job until they saw me on Apple Daily one day, like this kind of news media. And they're like, what is this?

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Jonathan Nguyen (06:23)
Ha ha ha ha!

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Jessica Liu (06:25)
Like what is this like and then I had to explain everything. But I think there was that drive to kind of do that and also solve that problem because like I'm sure Ankit will expand on much more is the idea of knowing there's a problem in the market that nobody else is solving and then we have this strong group of friends who have the different skill set required to actually make it happen and hopefully succeed as well.

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Ankit Suri (06:48)
Think, personally, I think entrepreneurship kind of came just, it was a natural instinct. I mean, when I go back to even my school times, there was something that I was doing on the side that was outside studying. It wasn't exactly running businesses, but it could be like, let's say building home for the homeless. You know, things like that. Even in university, we were doing a bunch of these projects. And then, you know, I was very privileged and lucky that I always found like great friends who thought in a very similar way. So even when we had our full-time jobs, actually after full-time jobs, we were also doing something, right? And so, and these friends ultimately are now the co-founders of this company.

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Personally, I think it was that intrinsic motivation that a job isn't what's defining the purpose on why I exist. It was just intrinsically there's something else that just hits you as a problem and then you just go like, just want to solve it. Having the right group of people around was just a great supporting function to enable that. Obviously taking that leap of faith then from this sort of, you know, after day job kind of thing was maybe it was a first time founder thing as well. There was not a lot of thought process behind it to be honest. It was very much like, you know, we were just building onto this thing and it was just being used by a few users in our offices among our friends group.

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And then we saw some news in the market, which we felt like was very encouraging for us. And so we said, look, there's nothing much that we will lose actually. Because when you're young, you also don't have any liabilities. You also don't have things that you really need to care about or worry about too much. You kind of just look at your bank accounts and say, hey, you know what? Can I survive for the next 12, 14 months?

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And just test out this thing, right? And I think that was a conversation we had very early on. We said, look, we'll give ourselves 12 months, right? And then we'll see where it goes. And we'll set some of these milestones, like, you know, can we raise some capital? Can we maybe get some users? And then we'll take step by step from there, right? So we didn't over Planto this. It was very much instinct. And I think...that naivety kind of like took us forward. And then, you know, it's been almost seven plus years now since that day.

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Jonathan Nguyen (09:21)
Interesting you frame it that way because most founders I've spoken to say something quite similar. You're a student, if you're thinking about a career, it's not the obvious pathway. It's also not a pathway that everyone thinks is an option for them. you have a hypothesis or do you have an idea of why for you guys you saw it as a possibility?

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Jessica Liu (09:52)
I'll give it a go. That's a great question. And I think for me, it wasn't that straightforward. I think it's a combination of different, I would say, ingredients that resulted in this. Just being transparent here, another co-founder of mine, of ours, is actually my husband. So back then, he was my boyfriend. And so I think that was also part of that feeling of trust in terms of like, we have a team that's really committed. But I think from that end, both Ankit and I have had I've already stressed the idea of having the right team.

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I would say it's also the right problem. At that point, we knew that, you know, we had these, actually before that, even, you know, having Planto or a PFM app, know, Ankit and our co-founder actually, you know, had different ideas as well. They're like, okay, there's this problem in the market. Do we want to solve it? Whether it's solar, whether it's loyalty programs or whatever. But those didn't really stick. But then when Planto came and then we realized, you know, there is that issue of people unable, finding it difficult to manage their finances. We went out and validated that, you whether it's our friends, whether it's going to start up weekend, telling people about these problems, you always had the same response where people are like, yes, I have that problem, can you actually solve it for us? And I think that was also part of the trigger of why, you know, we kind of, or I personally was so confident about the company because you had the combination of these things.

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Otherwise, I think even if you had an idea and you don't have a good team, it wouldn't play out. And likewise, you might have a good team, but also not a great idea or not an aligned way of finding out what is the right solution for this. So I think that all played into this whole situation.

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Ankit Suri (11:40)
Take another sort of angle to this as well. I feel like one of the pattern we have in Planto to us, all of us are kind of somewhat like foreigners in Hong Kong. Some of us even had career shifts, career changes as well. So I think it was always around like flexibility as well. And it wasn't, and I think also because of that, there was no real baggage that mindset sort of brings. so maybe that is my hypothesis around why we were probably able to take that shot, whilst others might not be able to. mindset really helps.

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Jonathan Nguyen (12:16)
Yeah, I was speaking to Pak from Votee AI. He mentors a 19 year old who goes to college here. It's well in Hong Kong, it's a challenge. The kid's background is not the best, but he wants to be an entrepreneur. He doesn't see the normal pathway of university and then a banking job as his pathway. advice would you give to 22 year old who is about to graduate who thinks I want to have a startup. What should they do?

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Ankit Suri (12:59)
At least my learning is that get started on doing something because it's likely going to change in the future, but you're going to keep capturing learnings, throughout. I mean, I even look at this like, you know, all these incredible people who have, who have, you know, made it like Mark Zuckerberg, etc. They didn't start out with the idea of building Meta or Facebook.

And it's just, you know, they, they realized that, you know, they just started doing things.

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And I think with action comes learnings and with learnings comes insights. And with insights comes a special company at the back of it. so, you know, to that 22 year old kid, my sort of advice would be, you know, get started. It doesn't matter if it's a good or a bad idea, just get started. Because at that point, you know, you really don't have like anything to lose and you're only going to gain when it comes to learning.

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Jonathan Nguyen (13:59)
So I have a follow-on question to that then. How did it start?

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Jessica Liu (14:03)
So I mean, I think Ankit, we can both talk about this here. I think if you're talking about post idea and actual execution, we obviously had this phase where we did a lot of validation. So actually all in all, we had a problem obviously, and we wanted to test it. And throughout that phase, we were testing it in a very, I would say, lean manner where we tried to be agile and we went through a process of alpha, beta, and then launch phase. And what we did was we spoke to more than users actually in person to really understand and to pinpoint exactly what they needed from that product. And through that built a minimal viable product through that. So then we can test more and get our initial power users.

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And how we actually got our power users was obviously you have friends and family, but they're always there just to support you. We wanted users that's there because they needed our product. And what we did was we used Facebook as a very Facebook and a very simple landing page where we state the problem and we stated the foundation of the solution. And it basically garnered a lot of wait lists.

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Then through that, we kind of use the MVP back and forth. A lot of our top 50 alpha users, we interviewed them, work with them, UI UX design, understood their features, understood their feedback. And then it just became a very organic kind of growth. And a lot of it has always been around the core of explaining the problems and then the solution, even in the marketing ads that we have, which is why the reason for that we were able to, our cost of acquisition was actually very low as well.

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And the foundation of everything was also the idea of us being very data driven. In terms of every decision we make, we make sure it's data backed, whether that's through our customers product usage or the different funnels. So that really, I would say, amplified our progress. But in terms of, let's say, the tech setup and all that, think, you know, Ankit can explain more about that too.

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Ankit Suri (16:13)
To be honest, to initial idea was our own problems, right? And I mean, like, we felt that, like, we were all in decent jobs, and we felt that we weren't able to save a lot of money. That's how it all kind of started anyway. And so initial very, very, very first version, when we still had our jobs, I think it was just built for our own use, actually. And then...in terms of like the tech, think we used, we didn't use anything fancy, just, you know, back then we used something like, I think Ionic, which is just basically this, you know, front end library where things are already built up components and then you just basically put them together.

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But there was something really hard that we had to solve, I think with Planto, one of the key things was, you know, how do you get customers to basically link their bank accounts to the app. That technology, we felt that maybe we could reach out to some of these existing infrastructure players, but when we tried them out, it was just not the greatest customer experience.

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What we also realized very early on is that if customers are going to trust us, then we need to make sure that when they try to connect their accounts to Planto, that it just has to work. It shouldn't be giving them an error. And we wanted to make sure that 99 out of 100 times we get that right. And there was just nothing like this available. So I think that was one of the most difficult problems that we had to solve from a technology perspective. And I think our co-founders did an incredible job doing that.

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Jonathan Nguyen (17:40)
Mm.

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Jessica Liu (17:52)
Onto that linkage thing, it was actually a very fun experience because we did a lot of A-B tests to actually understand what triggers customers to link their accounts. So we did stuff like having HKU's logo there or having Cyberport's logo there or even having the number of users actually using it. And then it turns out in the end, HKU's logo actually was the most impactful one. So it's just like, it's pretty interesting where you have to do a lot of different hypothesis and then test it out continuously.

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Jonathan Nguyen (18:20)
So this is not an easy problem, right? This is actually quite a hard problem, especially I think when you guys first started this idea of open banking and APIs were not really in place in Hong Kong, right? And I wanna come back to that particular aspect in a second, because I know that there is movement on that front finally. But what I wanna get to is this is not an easy problem to solve. There's three of you, I guess. you guys go out and raise funds to do this?

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Ankit Suri (18:52)
When we started out, we basically just, like, it was primarily team of engineers and product people anyway. like, very, very first day when we started out, we were just building out the app and just recruiting some, you know, users to start using it, you know, inviting friends over to use it. We set up things like Facebook Community, just to get people talking about the app a little bit, things like that. I think when we reached to a point where I think we had about 200 sort of beta users, and then we said, look, I think if we have to kind of make this into a real company, then I think we also needed to hire certain skill sets as well, that's when we said, okay, look, maybe we need to raise some funding when we kind of figured, okay, look, we need marketing money, we need to get this to more people out there, we need to talk to more users. So that's when we kind of started going out a little bit more in terms of raising money. 2018 was a good time to raise money. it was, we were very lucky to get it done pretty quickly as well. we didn't spend a lot of time actually just raising money.

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Ankit Suri (19:58)
It was almost like we were still developing product, we were still doing user research, but we were able to, let's say, get into an accelerator as well as close out a funding round pretty quickly to be able to help us go to market pretty quickly after. 2018 was a different time. I don't know if this kind of playbook would still work where you are at almost like a alpha stage, waiting list stage with a prototype and with a few users. back then, given it was early, given open banking was early, given the traction that we were getting on the technology development as well as the user feedback that we were collecting, it was all very exciting for investors for us to be able to raise money pretty quickly.

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Jonathan Nguyen (20:47)
Yes, times have definitely changed on that front. Okay, so let's jump back into the open banking. So you guys have pivoted now. You still have existing B2C clients, I guess, direct clients. What's this next phase? What are you guys promoting now? How's the product geared now? Where's your growth going to come from?

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Jessica Liu (21:11)
So actually I would say it's not so much of a pure pivot. It's just an extra, like I would say extra channel for our business whether it's in Hong Kong or even Southeast Asia or even the likes of UAE, Saudi, is that a lot of banks want to pump up their digital game. They want to build the Netflix experience. They want to do the, terms of credit decisioning, they want to make it a straight through automated experience, very different from what it was even just five, six years ago.

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And where we stand is really the intersection of that, where we have throughout this five, six years, done a lot of R &D on, let's say, how to build a very personalized experience based on a lot of different types of data. We've done a lot when it comes down to for businesses as well, where we've gained a lot of trust from financial institutions to help them build out what businesses want. So not just retail, but business customers as well. So that journey was a huge learning journey for us as well. And we've come to a place where we were able to build a lot of different use cases for open banking that helps banks and other financial institutions drive their business.

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And for us, you we've done it not only in the Hong Kong market, we've done it in Taiwan, and we're looking at other markets as well. And we know the whole model of going into a new market, even if it's a different language, or let's say a different structure of data, we're able to adapt very fast because of the structure that we have in place already. So I, you know, for us, we are really bullish on the idea of open banking. IADS in Hong Kong and we are really supporting where we can the growth of and the encouragement of the ecosystem of pushing the initiative forward.

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Ankit Suri (23:02)
Fintechs are getting banking licenses everywhere. We seeing this. We saw this in Hong Kong as well. I think it's really accelerating financial institutions' will to transform and provide their customers that just a very, very supreme digital experience. We were just so shocked that as a B2C company, this whole journey into B2B came in because the banks asked us, right, you guys are doing something interesting. You we want to learn from you guys. And then we said, look, I mean, like you're earning billions of dollars of profits, but you're talking to a small company startup like us. So we must be doing something right. So I think that it kind of like created this new generation of a new category of company, you know, called a bank tech or you know, technology provided to banks where, you know, banks just wanted, are looking forward to partnering with these sort of best in class companies who can give them those customer experiences fast.

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Jonathan Nguyen (24:01)
Let's put it in really tangible terms. We've used open banking, we've used these fancy terms. From a B2B to C sense, I'm a user, the bank has bought your services to give to their users what's the enhancement to their experience that they can expect.

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Ankit Suri (24:21)
Jessica maybe you want to start with the SME site first. I can talk a little bit about the retail site after.

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Jessica Liu (24:25)
Right, so for SME side, if you're looking at actually a really concrete example in Hong Kong is what we're helping a financial institution is really make the SME experience a lot better. Now SMEs are traditionally the most underserved amongst the different customer type when it comes down to banks. So you have retail, have corporates, and then you have SMEs. Retail, they've been optimized for digital experiences. Corporates, they have RMs because, you know, they're big enough to have an actual person serving almost 24-7. Getting loan is very difficult as they don't have as much data. They will require collateral which most of them don't have. And also opening a bank account is tough.

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We've seen a lot of fintechs trying to figure out the bank opening process for lot of SMEs as well, but fundamentally it's just difficult. And with IDS coming in Hong Kong, which is IDS is open banking in Hong Kong, is that it just changes this whole thing, this game for SMEs because it can potentially change the operating model of how banks assess their credit assessment process. So with this aggregate data, you can use cashflow. You can go for cashflow based credit assessment. You can use more data driven methodologies, which we are actually using right now, using our different AI models for data categorization, and size generation, and so forth. And you can make opening a bank account super easy because of the exchange of data and information between financial institutions.

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So we've been very core to that journey, which obviously is very different from the retail side, which we've been doing for more than, let's say, five, six years now. But we have applied the same mindset of being data-driven problem-solving to assist these banks to think in a different way and potentially revolutionize the way they operate for servicing their SMEs. And we've seen our influence, actually, and it's great to see that it's happening, and a lot of banks are accepting this change as well.

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Ankit Suri (26:22)
Think as a retail consumer, there's a few possibilities that we are already seeing. think firstly, just very simple example, if you're the kind of person who just logs all your spends on an Excel sheet, tries to figure out how much you spent just copying your statement over, that's about to change. You can just now simply link your bank accounts and you're able to get a very easy categorized view of how much you're spending, where you're spending. I think this is the beginning of the journey. A retail consumer, let's say a young millennial, there's so many questions that people ask when we were doing Planto as a mobile app. Will I be able to retire? Am I saving enough money? Am I investing enough money? So it's really about bringing out these financial insights to these consumers in an extremely personalized and data-driven way.

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So when I go onto that mobile app, it's like an RM or like my own advisor sitting on my phone who's telling me, hey, you know what? You're not investing enough money because you're just kind of like leaving money on the table or you will not be able to retire if you just keep on doing this. Or something as simple as you could just be saving money when it comes to your interest that you're paying loans or... So it's about giving these financial advisors kind of insights. We have to be careful though by calling it financial advisor because we are not providing any licensed advice at the moment, but it's the beginning of providing insights first. With data coming in, consolidated data coming in, I think it's really about figuring out all these scenarios of questions that people want to ask advisors and a digital channel being able to deliver that in the most proactive way possible.

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Jonathan Nguyen (28:13)
On the SME side, how would you describe the technology service that you're providing? Are you doing like KYC, are you an alternate credit score? How do you describe that service?

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Jessica Liu (28:30)
That's a great question. So we see ourselves as I think two roles. One is what we call BFM, which is business financial management. It's kind of like personal financial management for businesses where we work with banks to figure out what makes a client want to stick with you digitally. How can you solve the different problems that they have when it comes down to managing different accounts right now, whether that's accounting or admin processes. So we're working with a couple of banks on that in discovering, because this is a very new thing, I would say, especially in Hong Kong. And each SME's behavior is very different. So depending on the different industry they're in, we then work with that bank to facilitate with building that with the core back end of our data enrichment model on the transaction data. So the other one, as you've already mentioned, is around credit decisioning.

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Now for us, obviously, we're not a traditional lending company, but we facilitate that with the generation of the right insights for banks to be more, I would say, informed to make the right decision. Historically, would say they didn't have that mindset of using bank data as a source to assess their credit, SMEs credit. Traditionally, it was outdated annual reports and our managed financial management accounts, but these are usually not that available or that. I would say mature when it comes down to SMEs because they're so small in comparison to corporates. So they're not mature in that sense. So it's been very difficult for SMEs to do that. And where we play the role is we have APIs available, for example, like irregular transaction, red flags, cash flow, different buyer supplier risks, the relationship analysis, which gives the bank a little bit more or a lot more transparency around how the SME is doing. So, you know, we're working with different partners to enable some lenders to do that as well. But we're also working with, let's say, banks to offer them these platforms so that it facilitates their credit teams to make better decisions.

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Jonathan Nguyen (30:38)
Who would be your competitors in this space?

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Jessica Liu (30:40)
A very good question. So in Hong Kong, we were uniquely positioned to have trained our models on the data that we have unique access to. I would say that I know of the only player that is on the data enrichment level where we are able to train, categorize, and generate insights from banking data.

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Ankit Suri (31:00)
Just want to sort of add to that. I think there's different category of credit technology providers out there. there's a category of the traditional ones, like for example, the Trans Unions or the Equifax. These are the guys who are just generating the score based on the existing loans that these SMEs might have taken. There's not a lot of them, which is why they are underserved today. But then there's another category of credit enablers who are using what you call alternate data actually come up with some kind of, scoring for to be able to lend to these. we are specialising on this category called cash flow based lending, which is primarily just using SMEs banking data. So based on their banking data, what do we see that can help a credit team make a decision and price that loan.

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Others, all these alternative data providers, they might be using non-banking data. So effectively, I think all these three categories are credit enablers, but I think it's really about the data that we are all using to be able to help the credit team. And I think it's also not right to say that we are competitors. I think we haven't seen that a bank or a financial institution will go with one or the other. If anything, I think they might be going for providers because we all might be providing different insights about a customer. And I think for somebody who's lending more data is always better. I think these are just different category of companies that exist and I wouldn't really call them competitors.

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Jonathan Nguyen (32:42)
Your competitor is paper. I mean by that, traditionally, you could get this information. If you went to a bank and you applied for a loan as an SME, they ask you for printouts of your statements. So you go give them your statements and then fill out an application form, et cetera, et cetera. And that's how they make the decision. That's the incumbent, if you will. What you guys are offering, if I'm hearing you correctly, is...well, it's connected to their bank account. So you can process that data much faster and in real time if I'm interpreting what you're saying correctly.

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Ankit Suri (33:20)
So for these financial institutions, you know, who believe that they have all the data they need

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Jonathan Nguyen (33:27)
Are we mentioning names here or?

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Ankit Suri (33:29)
I would say the top three, four banks in all markets. I think it's really about bringing that mindset shift for them because if you already have all the data, why is it that SMEs are still underserved? I think it's really about then, they not asking the right questions? Are they not looking at the right data sets?

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So I think our competitor is that mindset of these top financial institutions who do think that they already have all the data available. And I think we have seen that when we have actually pitched to these banks, right? We pitched them and they go like, well, we already have all the data, so we don't really need the solution. Whereas when we speak to some of these banks who, you know, visibly don't have that data, they get a lot more excited about it. So, yeah, I think I would say the mindset of the top banks is also a competitor to us.

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Jonathan Nguyen (34:11)
It's definitely, I think, it's a hard challenge in some ways, especially in those big banks, I mean, having come from a big bank at one point, the feeling inside is a lot of inertia. is far smaller incentive to change than...an incentive to stay the same. And I will speak in very general terms. What kind of hurdles do you come across because I'm sure the people who bring you in that the product people the innovation people they will try they want to change right but probably they're probably facing off against 20 to 30 other people what what hurdles do you guys come across

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Jessica Liu (34:57)
Yeah, I think Jonathan, this really relates to something you shared with me before when we were at the HKMA event. And I was just mind blown because, you know, I was just like, wow, that's just, I couldn't believe it. You told me that I think for one of your projects, had to speak to more than, if I remember correctly, either more than 50, 140 stakeholders for a project. And I was just like, wow, like, you know, when we first started in doing this B2B business, we always assume

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Jonathan Nguyen (35:15)
140.

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Jessica Liu (35:27)
Okay, if I talk to the person who's an advocate for me, that would just be enough. That would move the needle when it comes down to making the project happen right. Even though to us it was a no-brainer, it was a problem that we can easily, our technologies can help them with. But then you realize, you know, B2B and B2C is a completely different ballgame. You have hundreds of stakeholders you potentially need to speak to, and maybe only a few actually ends up clicking with you. Then how do you actually navigate around that to move towards that decision-making, that speed of getting things done?

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And it's been such a huge learning experience because in the beginning like when I first had that experience where it's not that straightforward I thought okay maybe it's a top to bottom kind of thing where maybe if you speak to let's say someone who's a lot more senior it would it would do something. But no, it's not the case, right? Sometimes the senior management might not know the technology and they actually have someone in the middle management who they actually trust to make these decisions. And you just have to keep trying. And that's the nature of a B2B business, especially when you're talking to a financial institutions where they're so heavily regulated. And that's one of my, I would say, biggest hurdles because you can have the technology that's there to help them. But if you don't go through the people, it's like, it's really tough.

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Ankit Suri (36:51)
Number one question like is why should I be doing this? And so being able to answer that, or being able to find that person in the financial institution who is also trying to answer the same question is really where the opportunity is for us because there's definitely somebody who thinks that by taking this risk, I can actually make my way up, right? And I think up until now, most of the times we've been able to close deals is just because there is definitely that somebody who's that risk taker within that financial institution, right? So, you the roadblocks are obviously talking to the wrong people or, you know, just continuously answering that question, why should I do it now?

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But at the end of it comes like finding that one person who, you know, who's willing to take that risk and I think the other thing that I would also say as a roadblock is sometimes policy. So for example, open banking. I mean, we started out in 2018 when open banking was already a big buzz in other parts of the world, anticipating that it was something that would happen in Hong Kong in the next one or two years, but we are seven to eight years down the line now and open banking has recently picked up here in this part of the world.

You kind of just have to wait for the policies to mature and you need to just keep educating the policy makers around why this needs to happen. But you cannot control the pace. It's just a bit out of your hands.

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Jonathan Nguyen (38:25)
All of these policy can work for you or work against you. If the right policy hits, then you're on a rocket ship, right? it always goes back in some form of fashion to timing. So I think you guys have been, know, seven years is a good amount of time. I understand you're profitable already. So this is a very good place to be. And now you just have to bide your time for that right policy decision. We were at the HKMA event together. I spoke with I think, Natish from HKMA, he's ex-consulting, so it seems like they're trying to modernise their team, they're trying to bring people in from the outside, but they're still a government body. So they will only be able to move as quickly as the tens of thousands of people within that body can move you felt a difference in their posture in the last seven years that you've been trading? Have you felt a change?

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Ankit Suri (39:35)
Remember reaching out to HKMA back in 2018 when we started just to introduce to them what we were doing. And it was a one-off meeting. I think the biggest change that at least I've seen now is that was this kind of fear that I personally had when I was sitting in front of them back in 2018. Like I'm kind of like talking to the gods of, you know, the gods of this city and I have to be spot on perfect or, you know, they can just shut me down. But I don't feel that anymore. I feel like it's a lot more collaborative. And I feel like there is...like, and maybe that's personal, but like at least from my side, more open to sharing what's happening and just, you know, kind of taking them along on a journey opposed to just like kind of reporting to them around what we were doing. And I think them embracing that from us is a big change, at least for me personally.

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Jessica Liu (40:38)
I think they compared to six, seven years ago, they have to change, given the change in the whole focus on digital data, AI and so forth. And that's also like you've seen, Jonathan, that even within their teams, they're more open to hiring, let's say, from known traditional regulators, but consultants. I think it also, the fact that Plantos also grown in the past few years also plays a part in a sense that they have been more collaborative with us because they know that to some extent our agendas are aligned.

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We want to push forward things that they are pushing for as well and we are really here to support them anytime in order to do so because there is only so far regulators can do like you mentioned. But as a fintech actually there is, we have a lot of things we can do that we are not restricted by and we help where we can to support that. So I definitely agree that, you know, the people we've spoken to from HKMA in the past few years, it's been great that they've been more open. They've been open to sharing their challenges as well. And we've been sharing our challenges too. And then we try to figure things out together and, you know, hopefully push forward more innovation through open banking.

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Jonathan Nguyen (41:57)
I've got two more questions for you. I've got an... And they're both hard.

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Ankit Suri (42:02)
Okay.

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Jonathan Nguyen (42:03)
So question number one is I travel around the region a lot. I talk to a lot of startups in different countries and markets in APAC. I see in the last 12 to 24 months a lot of competition between countries heat up to support startups. So the traditional Singapore Hong Kong rivalry is definitely still there. It's changing shape. of these markets are trying to attract and nurture and build a startup ecosystem. I'm now seeing Japan, strangely enough, pick up in terms of supporting startups, some really brilliant startups starting to come out of Japan. a Hong Kong company looking to expand across the region, have you been wooed by, enticed, invited by other ecosystems to set up shop and to service their markets?

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Jessica Liu (43:10)
Yeah, sure. So we have, I think it's not so much you know, the other market is coming in, it's like certain Hong Kong ecosystem players encouraging our company to really look out as well because they are also aware of, let's say, certain regulators from other regions who are wanting to really grow their fintech ecosystem. Us right now, Hong Kong is priority because of what we mentioned, the policy change, the idea of pushing forward IADS and looking at other markets is also a secondary priority for us. And what we're really focused on is in those that are pushing for open banking and proving our kind of use cases there. Yeah, I think we've definitely seen some central banks interest in kind of wanting to work with us for implementing some of our models for their different value added services. So we're really exploring in that part too.

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Ankit Suri (44:09)
I think the cool thing is that many of these markets have established like their own market entry organizations for us to be able to speak to. I think...what's great is that a lot of these markets are quite welcome. it's really up to us to figure out which is the right market for us to tap into. what that has done is it has made it simple for us to maybe certain things. So for example, I think in fintech, one of the conversations that we have sometimes had is, we sometimes need something on the ground as a presence. So can we actually join one of the local associations.

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For example, we joined a Thai FinTech Association because we were exploring a project with a bank in Thailand. So being able to say that, we are part of the Thai FinTech Association, it gives us that little more local presence. So having these kind of ecosystems where we can join in order to validate the market sitting here is something that has only happened in the last few years and gives us that flexibility to do that.

And I mean, Hong Kong plays a great role because it's such a great super connector city. A lot of markets are looking at Hong Kong. Hong Kong also talks to a lot of markets at the same time. So great for us that these ecosystems exist as long as we are able to pick the right markets to tap into.

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Jonathan Nguyen (45:26)
Question, hardest question. five to 10 years, do you see all this going? Not just Planto but the industry as a whole.

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Ankit Suri (45:35)
Fintech is about to grow a lot more because there are still customer segments who are not getting served, that's underbanked population in Southeast Asia or whether that's like underserved customer segments in Hong Kong like SMEs for that matter. Like it is bound to happen because that's the only way these publicly listed companies are gonna be able to grow. And where I see... technology coming in is I heard this very recently. I'm going to digress a little bit, but I heard this recently because this financial institution recently asked, hey, AI is changing every one week, but our procurement policies only allow us to onboard a vendor in about eight months. So by the time we onboard a vendor on a particular piece of technology, that AI is already outdated. What do we do about it? And the reality is now they're challenging their procurement policies because of the changing technology. So I think the whole operating structure is about to change based on these new technology advancements that are happening, which is going to promote agility and more innovation in the market. looking forward to it.

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Jessica Liu (46:40)
My take is I'm sure back in the 1990s, Bill Gates said something how banking is necessary, but banks are not. So I think in 10 years, we're likely to see those who are really focused on technology, who are open to apply AI, who are flexible in their operating models like Ankit mentioned to really thrive. And this also comes down to the right leadership as well. But those who are still caught up in their old ways, who insist on, let's say, the traditional practices, the current operating model, there will definitely be, I would say, a change there. So, and it's good change, I would think.

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Jonathan Nguyen (47:22)
Guys, thank you very much. It's been a nice long conversation. It's been great to have the two of you to give your different perspectives. I will be keeping an eye out for you guys, see how you guys do. And a year from now, I would love to touch base again and see where you're at, whether there's an IPO imminent or whether you're all HSBC badged acquisitions now.

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Ankit Suri (47:49)
Thanks a lot, Jonathan.

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Jessica Liu (47:49)
Touchwood, hopefully. Yeah, thank you so much for having us, Jonathan.

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