MASTER ENTREPRENEUR CATEGORY
Vishal Tulsian
President Director & CEOPT Bank Amar Indonesia Tbk
Financial Services Industry
www.amarbank.co.id
Information about the Entrepreneur
Vishal Tulsian founded Indonesia’s first and only fully regulated digital lending start-up (FinTech), Tunaiku in 2014. He is also the CEO of PT Bank Amar Indonesia Tbk (Amar Bank). Vishal recognised a gap in Indonesia between those with money who were already served by big banks, and those without money and with no access to financial services. He believes technology can positively impact people’s lives by improving their financial awareness/security and saving habits. He successfully transformed a traditional banking environment to achieve 25x growth in five years and set a vision to bring smiles to 200 million faces by 2025, via financial inclusion and literacy. Passionate about innovation, Vishal is a recognised FinTech industry expert, respected digital banking authority and driver of many revolutionary industry initiatives. A qualified Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary, he also completed the prestigious Harvard Business School Executive Management Programme, a Master’s degree in the UK, and 40+ certificate courses.With senior industry contacts and professional technology business relationships (in Silicon Valley and other global locations), Vishal contributed to hundreds of media articles. He is regularly invited as keynote speaker/panellist for well-known local and international digital banking events such as MoneyLive, Banktech Asia, MediciGlobal, and World AI Show.
Other Interesting Facts about the Entrepreneur
Born in India, Vishal has also lived in Europe, Africa and Asia; with a broad education covering finance, marketing, management and technology. He worked at Standard and Poors India where he developed a deep understanding of credit; then headed a business in Estonia to reverse six consecutive years of losses to profit within eight months. Vishal has received several personal industry awards for outstanding business leadership – Top Leader on Digital Implementation by IT Works Magazine in (2020), Top CEO Bank from Top Business Magazine (2019), and Most Admired CEO - Excellent Leadership for SME Expansion Strategy by WartaEkonomi News (2019).Things are either controllable or not. Give your best effort and attention to the controllable and have faith that the noncontrollable will always turn out in your favour.
Company Achievements and
Role of the Entrepreneur
As one of Indonesia’s first homegrown FinTech start-ups, Tunaiku
is a pioneer in the country’s banking sector. Amar Bank is becoming
one of Indonesia’s forerunning FinTechs, now recognised globally
in the banking and financial services industry. Vishal is responsible
for setting up.
Tunaiku, from inception, including idea conception, to sourcing and securing partners and gathering a team in a new country and obtaining approval from regulators. He overcame significant challenges in the early days – firstly with regulatory approval in the little known FinTech sector, and secondly with attracting talents to the little known start-up.
Under Vishal’s leadership, Tunaiku made notable achievements including significant employee growth from just 17 in 2014 to over a thousand in 2021. Revenue recorded considerable growth from USD 7 million to USD 300 million in just six year. The Bank also received 22 industry-recognised prestigious awards since 2017.
Under Vishal’s leadership, Amar Bank reached profitability in just two years of operation, and in 2020 over USD410 million (IDR5 trillion) in loans were disbursed to more than 400,000 customers (100,000 of which are MSMEs) via digital lending platform Tunaiku. Vishal led a capital injection for Amar Bank in June 2019, and the Bank’s core capital has now reached more than IDR1 trillion, and the banking license upgraded from a BUKU I to BUKU II. In January 2020, Vishal led Amar Bank’s IPO on the Indonesian Stock Exchange with 1.2 billion shares released. Recently he led the launch of Indonesia’s first mobile-only/Cloud-based digital bank (Senyumku) in partnership with Google.
Vision, Mission & Future Plans
A man of vision and action, Vishal has positioned Amar Bank to tap the opportunities from Indonesia’s rapidly growing digital financial services market. With its sufficient capital base, strong management team and the right regulatory licenses and support, he believes this is a pivotal time for digital financial services in Indonesia. Vishal sees strong growth potential in providing unsecured loans to micro-businesses (Tunaiku and Tunaiku for business) and mobile-only digital bank services for the underbanked population and to help people form healthy financial habits through AI technology (Senyumku).CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
