Arivuvel Ramu: Spearheading Asia’s First Next-Gen Financial Experience Platform

Any conversation about South-East Asia is incomplete without talking about the blue-collar or gig workers. Every year thousands of workers and laborers migrate from countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Srilanka, Philippines to other countries in the Middle East and South- East Asia for a better livelihood. Once getting their job in those countries, these blue-collar workers send a part of their earnings in the form of cash or goods to support their families back home. These transfers are mostly known as migrant remittances, which are multiplying over the past few years, and now represent the largest source of foreign income for several developing countries.

However, it’s tough to estimate the amount of remittance flow each year, as most of them occur in unofficial channels. In most cases, unofficial channels don’t provide real-time funds transfers, and the amount gets settled periodically through a commercial bank. In several poor households, remittance may buy essential goods, healthcare, and education. In wealthier families, remittance may provide capital for starting a business. Sadly, most of these Blue Collar workers are either unserved or underserved by most of the legacy banks, which makes it impossible to improve their standard of living.

So, Arivuvel Ramu, a serial entrepreneur, founded Inypay, a Singapore-based fintech startup, to shake the digital transformation for the financial service industry by providing the best-in-class, API-driven, cost-effective, cloud-native, next-generation financial experience platform, and digital banking as a service platform over a Managed SaaS model.

Micro-lending, domestic payments, e-wallets, remittances, micro insurance, and customized group savings are the primary areas of concentration for Inypay. Presently the fintech startup employs over 30 employees in Singapore, Vietnam, and India and has plans to expand across five countries in South-East Asia.

The Steadfast Leader

Inypay’s CEO and Founder, Arivuvel Ramu, is a veteran industry leader with over two decades of tech industry expertise. He has led digital transformation programs for banks across South-East Asia, the Middle East, and North America. Arivuvel has spearheaded projects with DBS, UOB, Maybank, OCBC, Axis Bank, Citi India, Union Bank, China Bank, Bank Danamon, MAB, and NDB. He is also the mastermind behind Tonik Digital Bank, Philippines’ first neobank. During his time at Tonik, Arivuvel was responsible for concept and implementation, managing both the group and local banking entities and enabling Tonik’s growth to more than a billion USD.

Establishing the Company

Being a serial entrepreneur, Arivuvel recognized that none of the current solutions in the market cater to the needs of blue-collar workers, foreign domestic workers, and micro-SMEs in Southeast Asia.

“Inypay is Asia’s first next-gen financial experience platform (Neobank) which improves the underserved and unserved people in SEA and empowers women and micro SMEs.”

So, he decided to create a financial institution that could help improve the lives of the underserved and unbanked in South East Asia with a next-generation digital platform providing them with hyper-personalized financial experiences and digital-only products & services, which led to the inception of Inypay in December 2021.

Path Breaking Services

Under Arivuvel’s leadership, Inypay is entirely focused on three segments (Retail Mass affluent and emerging affluent, Blue-collars, and MicroSMEs). For Retail customers, the fintech company provides Digital Onboarding and eKYC automation, Micro Lending, Payments, Micro Insurance, Personalized savings and communal Savings, Cards, Wallets, and Realtime Remittance. For tourists, it provides Wallets and Cards, Seamless remittance/payments services. And for SMEs, Inypay provides Working Capital and Invoice financing services.Inypay’s lending process is driven through its state-of-the-art in-house intent-driven alternate credit scoring to tab the underserved/unserved markets with its unique decision engine algorithms.

Asian Business Environment

Arivuvel believes the Asian market desperately needs a reliable place to save and access their money, quickly send money to a loved one in their home country, get emergency cash in real-time, access reliable insurance and working capital, and invoice financing for Micro SMEs.

Looking at the Future

Inypay is now all set for the Inypay Singapore pilot launch in Q2 2023, Inypay Philippines pilot launch (Rural bank) in Q4 2023, and SME (invoice financing / digital onboarding) in Q2 2024.

“We are targeting to launch a neobank in Dec 2023. It will generate USD 200m revenue by 2026 with an 8m customer base and a USD 2b valuation,”- stated Arivuvel.