Asia Tech Podcast

I had a super conversation with Asheesh Chanda, the CEO and Founder of Kristal.AI. Asheesh has more than 15 years of experience in the financial industry, including 8 years at JP Morgan Chase heading South and South-East Asia. Prior to founding Kristal.AI, Asheesh was a portfolio manager at KrisCapital, a global macro hedge fund.  As he noted to me, a resume perfectly crafted to get into FinTech. I asked Asheesh what the most important trends were in the FinTech space in Southeast Asia.  Asheesh was very quick to answer.  In the last year, both Hong Kong and Singapore have allowed and approved applications for virtual banks.  During Asheesh’s career in the hedge fund world, there was the realization that the traditional financial sector catered to the already rich and helped them get richer.  He wanted to have a more significant impact on the financial lives of those that are not yet wealthy.  He was looking for a problem to solve and the idea of providing advice and an investment platform to the underserved