Tryb and Fintech in Asia Pacific with Markus Gnirck & Lien Choong Luen
Markus Gnirck, CEO and co-founder and Lien Choong Luen, COO of Tryb joined us in a conversation to discuss the backstory and evolution of their company, and their recent round of US$30M from Makara Capital. They also discussed their perspectives on the major trends on fintech in Asia Pacific, specifically on how the Chinese technology giants and local banks are approaching financial inclusion and the challenges on regulation and navigation in the fintech space by corporations & startups.
Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):
- Markus Gnirck (@mgnirck, LinkedIn), CEO and co-founder and Choong Luen Lien (LinkedIn), COO from Tryb Group [0:38]
- How did you start your career?
- Markus Gnirck’s journey from aerospace engineering to fintech [1:26]
- Choong Luen’s journey from military special forces to McKinsey to fintech [2:54]
- In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt?
- Choong Luen’s career lessons [4:38]
- Markus Gnirck’s career lessons [5:43]
- How did you start your career?
- Tryb (@trybgroup , LinkedIn) [6:32]
- What is the mission and vision of Tryb? [6:48]
- What is the problem which you are solving with your company? [8:06]
- How do you assemble your initial team? [11:11]
- What are the products and services which Tryb will be building or acquiring? [13:00]
- Where are you with respect to the fintech supply chain? [15:58]
- Recently, you have raised 30M from Makara Capital, can you talk about your investors and the fundraising process? [17:38] (Reference: TechCrunch)
- Fintech In Asia [20:08]
- Fintech has been a hot topic across Asia Pacific, what are the key verticals that are flourishing within Asia? [20:42]
- What are the factors driving the verticals in fintech such as P2P lending, cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, digital payments and insurance tech? [26:53]
- Do you see a possible inundation of Chinese payment systems controlling the payment systems for example what Ant Financial and Tencent have successfully done in China and porting it to Southeast Asia or a local bank like DBS which shifts towards the digital bank model? [31:46]
- What are the challenges faced by regulators in response to fintech? How are businesses such as large corporations and startups negotiating the regulatory boundaries of fintech? [36:34]
- Where do you see fintech in the next 1-2 years? [42:19]
- Closing [44:15]
- Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or something that has recently impact your work or personal life? [44:21]
- Markus’s recommendation: His upcoming new financial podcast and “How Asia works” by Joe Studwell
- Choong Luen’s recommendation: “The 100 Year Life” by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott and “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande
- BL’s recommendation: “The General Theory of Employment, Interest & Money” by Maynard Keynes
- How can my audience find you? [47:09]
- Choong Luen: Adventures with Lien
- Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or something that has recently impact your work or personal life? [44:21]
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The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong & weibo) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk on Indiegogo (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, Altizen and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack.
