Dima Djani is the founder and CEO of Hijra (formerly known as ALAMI Group), an Islamic challenger bank in Indonesia.

Hijra started as a sharia-compliant SME lending platform, disbursing over $350M to SMEs across Indonesia from more than 350k users across our lending and banking platforms.

They have raised around $50M of equity and $50M of debt. At the moment, Hijra is one of the largest Islamic neobanking plays in Southeast Asia.

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👋🏼  How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

It's similar to the banking industry, but more ethical, responsible, and digital. That's the oversimplified version of it, but we believe that everything that we do will eventually narrow the wealth equality gap that we see in our society.

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🧐  What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

‍I met my wife at a conference and proposed to her 2 days after that.

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🏆  What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Working together with Stanford GSB to write a case study about our company and present it before the MBA students is one of the highlights in 2024!

It is apparently exponentially more nervous when you become the center of discussion among the smart, ambitious students.

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🔍  What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?

AI is revolutionizing some of the job functions, yet we remain to see the impact to the financial industry in a big way.  

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💼  What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

Learn the mistakes of the first-movers, especially when it comes to the regulatory side of things.

Dream big and raise big funding, as in banking/lending, the setup and minimum maintenance cost can be substantive.

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🗣  What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

Geopolitics. The state of the market and industry, especially Islamic finance. Business ideas.

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🎥  What's your favorite movie/TV show?

Recently I watched the Hamilton play, and I’m so hooked by it.  

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🍨  What's your go-to ice cream flavor?

Chocolate