Sandeep is the General Manager of SariPay at GrowSari, a leading Philippine-based financial inclusion-focused fintech for micro and small enterprises. He is a fintech builder with extensive experience in consumer financial services. 

‍

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

With a financial inclusion lens, SariPay is a new fintech company that focuses on all aspects of micro and small enterprises (MSE's) financial needs so they can run their business better. The group is involved in helping sari-sari stores, carinderias, and other small retailers with their inventory financing needs, accepting digital payments from their customers and paying their suppliers, and helping them better understand and manage their cash flow. 

‍

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

After spending 20 years in large financial institutions, I took a plunge into building fintech and loved every aspect of it. It's fun to get back to the basics of banking and see it from a different lens. 

I can also squat 100kg in the gym.

‍

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

From a career standpoint, it has been the ability to see myself being able to manage large consumer banks and also build fintech from incubation. To be able to both - manage and scale with the complexity of large corporations and simultaneously build and scale something nimble with few resources has made me appreciate both sides of the business world.

‍

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

Global payments (cross-border) and connecting various real-time payments (RTP) across the countries. Several countries now have RTP rails, and how those will get connected to make money travel across borders will be great. It will also lower the cost of money transfers for so many people. Another big item that needs to be solved is financial inclusion for micro and small retailers. Micro and small enterprises still are relatively under-served (especially small stores, restaurants, and service locations). This will be the next big challenge, and it's not all tech. 

‍

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

Be inquisitive, question all the standing assumptions, and be open to taking risks. Think about pain points to solve before going down the tech solution path. 

‍

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

How to provide credit to all aspects of society.

‍

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

Big Bang Theory for TV shows. The Godfather I and II for movies.

‍

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

It was Mango until I tasted Ube flavor ice cream (even though I rarely eat ice cream).