Press Release
- Vishal Shah joins from Techcombank and is appointed President, Emerging Markets.
- Vineet Agarwal joins from DBS Bank and is appointed President, Neobank.
- These new roles and hires are a crucial part of Validus’ innovation and execution strategies as it further expands its geographical coverage and suite of products and services.
SINGAPORE & VIETNAM, 28 January 2022 – Validus, Southeast Asia’s leading SME growth financing platform, today announced two key additions to its senior leadership team. Vishal Shah has joined as President, Emerging Markets, and is responsible for driving growth in emerging and new markets. Vineet Agarwal has joined as President, Neobank, and is responsible for driving Validus’ digital financial services and neobanking plans across Southeast Asia.
Vishal is a financial services veteran who brings more than 20 years of leadership and business experience in SME, commercial and retail banking across Asia with Techcombank and Standard Chartered. Vineet is a digital product development and payments expert with more than 16 years of experience in driving digital and data strategies across markets in the Asia-Pacific region with DBS and American Express.
Validus Co-founder and Group CEO Nikhilesh Goel said, “Validus is in hyper growth mode, and as we continue to drive financial inclusion for SMEs across Southeast Asia, I am delighted to welcome Vishal and Vineet to Validus. Both Vishal and Vineet bring invaluable expertise to the company and are well-placed to build on our ambitious plans and steer us forward in emerging markets and in our neobanking strategy.”
Last year, Validus was named as one of the top startups in Singapore in LinkedIn’s 2021 Top Startups list. In the intensely competitive talent market, Validus has consistently managed to attract talent to join, and more than 90% of its senior leadership team across Southeast Asia have strong experience in banking and financial services. Validus continues to expand its team and has added more than 25% new hires in the past six months, with the majority coming in support of new technology and neobank initiatives.
Validus recently crossed a significant milestone of US$1 billion in SME loan disbursals across Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. The company is backed by highly reputed VCs including FMO, Vertex Growth, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, AddVentures by SCG, K3 Ventures, Openspace Ventures and VinaCapital Ventures.
Biographies
Vishal Shah is a financial services veteran who brings more than 20 years of leadership and business experience in SME, commercial and retail banking across Asia with Techcombank and Standard Chartered.
Prior to joining Validus, Vishal was Chief Business Banking Officer for four years at Techcombank in Vietnam, where he drove strong bottom-line results – growing profit five-fold and income by three times. Vishal was part of Techcombank’s Executive Team and was a member of the Executive Committee and several other Management and Steering Committees for various bank-wide multi-year transformation programs.
Prior to this role, Vishal held several leadership and expert level positions in SME, Commercial and Retail Banking at Standard Chartered, over a career spanning seventeen years, including eight years as a Managing Director.
Vineet Agarwal is a digital product development and payments expert with more than 16 years of experience in driving digital and data strategies across markets in the Asia-Pacific region with DBS and American Express.
Prior to joining Validus, Vineet was Executive Director, Regional Analytics, Consumer Banking Group and Wealth Management at DBS, where he drove the use of Business Analytics, AI and Machine Learning to solve business challenges across Consumer and Private Banking, and deployed several AI solutions in the region to drive business growth. At American Express, he drove growth in eCommerce spend via several virtual payment products, a cross-border e-commerce solution and a fully digital mobile loyalty solution.
About Validus
Founded in 2015 to address the unmet financing needs of SMEs, Validus is Southeast Asia’s leading SME growth financing platform, which has now expanded beyond lending solutions to become ASEAN’s first SME-focused, full-suite financial services provider. Validus is headquartered in Singapore and is growing rapidly across its four markets – Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. An award-winning FinTech, Validus uses data analytics and AI to drive growth financing to the underserved SME sector via funds from individual and institutional investors. Validus holds a Capital Markets Services License by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and is also licensed by Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK) in Indonesia and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Thailand. For more information, please visit www.validus.sg.
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