Press Release
- Anshul brings experience from engineering leadership roles in startups and Fortune 50 companies in India and Southeast Asia, including Traveloka and Amazon
- The appointment of Anshul underscores the pivotal role technology plays as Validus continues its mission to make digital financing more accessible and inclusive for small businesses across Southeast Asia
SINGAPORE, 11 May 2023 – Validus, Southeast Asia’s leading all-in-one SME business account and financing platform, today announced the appointment of Anshul Johri as Group Chief Technology Officer (CTO), effective 5 April 2023. Anshul brings over 17 years of technology expertise in driving growth and scale for startups and large companies across various industries, and is responsible for leading the technology strategy across the region to propel Validus into its next phase of growth.
Prior to joining Validus, Anshul spent 6 years as Head of Engineering at Indonesian unicorn Traveloka, where he scaled Traveloka’s financial services products such as payment platform, digital wallet, buy now pay later (BNPL), insurance and wealth management. Anshul’s experience spans across e-commerce, travel, and fintech industries across India and SEA countries.
Validus Co-founder and Executive Chairman Vikas Nahata says, “Anshul’s successful and varied experience at organisations ranging from bootstrapped startups to unicorns and Fortune 50 companies makes him an invaluable addition to our executive team as we continue to drive our ambitious technology plans forward. We are delighted to have him on board to infuse a new energy as we execute on our key technology initiatives to build, scale, and deliver best-in-class digital financial services for small businesses across the region.”
Validus recently secured its first tranche of funds in a Series C1 round with investment from new, major East Asian strategic investors NongHyup Financial Group, NorinChukin Bank, Aizawa Asset Management, and Lotte F&L Singapore.
Since its establishment in 2015, Validus has disbursed over USD 2.6 billion in loans to small businesses in Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. The company is also backed by highly reputed VCs including Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, Vertex Growth, FMO, AddVentures by SCG, K3 Ventures, Openspace Ventures and VinaCapital Ventures.
Appendix – Anshul’s Biography
Anshul Johri is a technology expert with over 17 years of experience driving growth and scale for startups and large companies in the e-commerce, travel, and fintech industries across India and SEA countries.
Prior to joining Validus, Anshul was Head of Engineering at Indonesian unicorn Traveloka, where he scaled Traveloka’s financial services products. In his 6 years at Traveloka, payment platform, digital wallet, buy now pay later (BNPL), insurance and wealth management were some of the products which scaled under his technical leadership to serve millions of Traveloka’s customers across SEA markets.
Anshul began his career with some of the early age startups in India, where he witnessed the growth of the startup ecosystem in India. He then joined Amazon and became part of the Amazon Prime success story, where he worked in a highly distributed Amazon Prime Engineering environment to serve millions of Amazon customers across the globe. Anshul left Amazon to pursue his own entrepreneurship journey where he bootstrapped his company and product, and raised seed funds before deciding to move on after 2 years. Anshul is also a book writer on open-source search technologies.
About Validus Group
Validus Group (“Validus”) is the leading all-in-one SME financing platform in Southeast Asia today, changing the way small businesses grow through effortless access to the finance solutions they need. Validus drives financial inclusion and prosperity for small businesses by leveraging data, AI, and strategic supply chain partnerships to drive growth financing to the under-served SME sector – resulting in faster and simpler one-stop financial solutions that increase customers’ productivity and cost savings. Validus’ SME-focused, full-suite business finance offering includes loans, business accounts, corporate cards, payments, and expense management. To date, Validus has disbursed more than USD 2.6 billion1 in loans to small businesses across Southeast Asia.
Founded in 2015 to address the unmet financing needs of SMEs, Validus is headquartered in Singapore and is growing rapidly across its four markets – Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. In Singapore, Validus holds a Capital Markets Services License from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Batumbu (Validus Indonesia) is licensed by Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK) in Indonesia, and Siam Validus is licensed by Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in Thailand. For more information, please visit validus.sg.
1 Figures are as of May 10, 2023
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FinTech News: Validus names former Traveloka Exec Anshul Johri as Group CTO
