Podcast: Hard Truths by Vertex | Episode 2 - Building Nium Into a Unicorn with Pratik Gandhi

Elise TAN | 01 Feb 2023

Starting with a little office in a dilapidated old building to joining the rarefied ranks of unicorns in Southeast Asia, Nium has come a long way. But what did it take to keep it going even when the chips were down and fresh funding was hard to come by? What set them apart from their competition and what were some of the bets they had to make? And what were some of the Hard Truths they learned on the way?

Our Guests

Pratik Gandhi is the COO and co-Founder of Nium (formerly InstaReM), a leading embedded fintech company that provides banks, payment providers, and businesses of any size with access to global payment services. He leads the global finance, operations, and customer service teams, with responsibility for driving focus on Nium’s financial activities and helping the company deliver exceptional experiences.

Prior to Nium, he worked for companies such as Arthur Andersen, Xerox, PepsiCo and Telstra before specialising in banking, an industry where he held senior roles at Fullerton India Credit, Standard Chartered Bank, and Citibank.

In This Episode

(00:58) Joining Nium

(04:34) Relationship with CEO Prajit Nanu

(08:53) Partnering with banks

(15:06) Difficult moments

(21:27) A big bold bet - acquiring Ixaris

(26:47) Hard Truths

(32:19) Catching the Startup bug

(35:40) Culture at Nium

Watch this episode on YouTube.

Part 1

Part 2

Listen on:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0yhZ7RPNEvX36IC5b9Z1lh

Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy50cmFuc2lzdG9yLmZtL2hhcmQtdHJ1dGhzLWJ5LXZlcnRleA

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hard-truths-by-vertex/id1659392336

**Check out and Listen to the other episodes here.**

If you like what you hear please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

FYI on the sharing by Genping Liu, "Note on Nium becoming a unicorn" https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ambitious-yet-grounded-note-nium-becoming-unicorn-genping-liu/

Links

Show notes and full transcript for the episode

Your Hosts

Elise Tan is the Director of Communications and Community at Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India. Prior to joining Vertex, she has had extensive experience in investor relations and partnership at global venture funds and accelerators with more than $100m in AUM. Elise also currently runs a Southeast Asia-based startup community of nearly 800 entrepreneurs called the Asia Startup network and actively supports their startup journey through panels, meet-ups and mentoring programs.

—-

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth - raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists and industry experts in the region and to gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please click follow or subscribe and share it with entrepreneurs or investors in your circle so we can all grow, succeed and build the future of SEA and India together.

—

This podcast is powered by CrazyTok: We help experts become influencers.

Find us on our Website, LinkedIn or Instagram

We thank you Vertex Holdings for their support.

This podcast is powered by CrazyTok: We help experts become influencers.

For the latest news on Vertex Ventures SE Asia and India and our portfolio companies, follow us on Linkedin or subscribe to our monthly newsletter.