Vidit Agrawal is the co-founder of GajiGesa, a fintech company that serves unbanked blue-collar workers in Indonesia. Their platform offers services like earned wage access to prevent workers from going to predatory lenders. 

They raised a $6.6M pre-Series A in 2021.

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

So we have an app that helps companies provide benefits to their blue-collar workers. The main thing is that instead of the blue-collar worker going to a loan shark or a predatory lender whenever they need money now they can go to GajiGesa and withdraw their money. 

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👏 How did you find out about this problem and what motivated you to address it? 

In my previous life, I was the first employee of Uber and my last role at Uber was Head of Partnerships APAC. During that time, I saw so many Uber drivers across markets—Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam—making $250 a month and surviving on that. They had a lot of financial challenges and a common one was that they would end up with loan sharks when in need. 

Similarly, my co-founder, who's also my wife Martina, was at LenddoEFL credit-scoring blue-collar workers at factories and she saw a similar response. 

Then we did research and we realized that over 72% of workers and factories had an active loan. And it wasn't through a bank or any of the proper channels. It was often through a loan shark. 

So we realized that this problem, especially in Indonesia and the Philippines, is much more widespread than we had imagined. And that is why we decided to start GajiGesa.

There are 128M people who earn less than $1K salary in Indonesia. That is our target segment. 

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

I think one of the things is when you look at the co-founders, less than 5% of co-founders that are VC-backed are husband and wife. We've been doing this for three years, and I've been doing it with my wife. And I often get asked, how's the experience? People are very fascinated and curious about the whole combination of a husband and wife, running a company. 

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

Impact is really important when I look back at my career. When we looked at our data, we've saved over $40M of predatory lending fees since we started…cumulative number. And I feel that that is the biggest impact that we've had. 

That is my biggest achievement, that I've been able to do something that has benefited so many lives. So many people who have come from a very humble background often are not educated, and we are able to save that money for them and they don't have to go to loan sharks.

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🏆 You’re targeting a market that’s not necessarily what founders would think is ‘profitable’, why?

So I think money is there to be made. We are not a nonprofit organization. I think this is a highly underserved market, often because the penetration is not there and banks choose to serve a higher targeted segment.

Even though it is tough to enter and it has taken a while for the sales cycles to be able to impress upon the employer the need for GajiGesa, we also think that's our biggest mode. 

Because banks are not willing to enter…it's a tough space, so once you build your ability to connect with the employer and onboard them, then they will stay with you. Today we have over 300 enterprises. And anyone looking to serve this segment, we become a natural fit for them. Either it's a bank or it's a fintech, it's any kind of a lender, it's a neobank. All of them would come to us because we have access to this broad pool of customers. 

So, yes, initially it was challenging, but it is also one of our biggest modes that we've been able to crack the space. 

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

I come from fintech. I believe fintech has taken a big hit when it comes to funding due to just the overall environment and cost of capital. And we haven't seen a lot of innovation this year.

So I feel like a lot of interesting stuff is going to happen in the next six months to a year. We've seen a lot of good activity in cross-border payments, especially B2B payments globally. A lot of interesting startups are coming out of Singapore, India, in the space. So I'm very excited about fintech overall, and I continue to be. Other spaces would be climate tech and pollution environment scenes. 

I spend all my time in Jakarta, and no matter what you say, it's a lovely city, but it's also very tough to breathe there. I feel that that is a humongous opportunity. That's a problem that nobody has really cracked, nobody solved it. 

And that could be a billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar industry. And the problem is not limited to Jakarta you know you look at some of the bigger Southeast Asian cities manila, Bangkok. Then you look at India, which has always had issues with pollution.

 If somebody's able to look at this market, there's a huge opportunity and we've seen some interesting startups come through. 

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

So as a founder, especially during the time of 2022 and 2021 (when there was a lot of easy money available), I know a lot of people who got in with a goal of making a quick buck, doing this for two years and getting out. 

I think one thing I myself have realized as a founder is it's a long grind, it's a much longer commitment. And if you get into a startup with the goal of doing it for one or two years and getting out, I don't think that's the right approach. So one advice would be, of course, with all other things, like planning your finances, be ready to commit for longer. 

Don't think of it as a short-term gig, because one of the best pieces of advice I got when I started was that a friend said that at the two-year mark, you'll still be figuring out where the business is. And that was just a reality, like every stage you're figuring out. So it's not a short-term gig, it is a commitment for the long term.

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🍎 What is your advice for people who want to build a social impact business, especially in Singapore? 

See, it is very important for you to figure out: are you trying to build, especially when it comes to social enterprise, are you planning to raise a lot of money and grow this in volume? Are you planning to raise a little money and continue to grow? Because the moment you raise some money, especially VC, any kind of VC money, there is an expectation of return. Or are you planning to do purely nonprofit? 

At a small level, I think understanding that is really important. Secondly, I feel like Singapore seems challenging because the cost of living is really high and people feel that social impact. And I know there are challenges in Singapore society, but the basic challenges are sometimes covered by the government, which does not exist in a market like Indonesia or a developing country. 

So people in developing countries are a lot more receptive when you say that you're going to solve a lot of those problems. Whereas in Singapore, sometimes the market by itself is very so I feel like if you're planning to do it in Singapore, try small to early stage, try to work with other social enterprises, understand their challenges, see the scope they are working on. 

But if you really want to grow and work at scale, I think in a market like Indonesia, you'll be able to have a much bigger impact. 

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

I love animals, especially the lion. I am crazy about watching animal videos. I can spend hours and hours watching those videos and then boring my friends to death about what I saw or my wife. 

So yeah, I'm just fascinated by the animal kingdom that we as humans are always running around trying to achieve, be successful, and make money. When you're in the animal kingdom, you 24/7, think about survival. You don't want to die and you want to eat and you don't want to die. And it's just fascinating, that world, how beautiful, how amazing that life is and how simple that life is.

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

Suits. I watched the whole season of Suits All Seasons because it was on Netflix, and it was very entertaining. I learned a bit about law, though. They don't talk that much in legal language, but it was fun.

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

Pistachio, always. 

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FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.