Asia Tech Podcast

Digital transformation is often associated with industries that are already forward looking and generally technologically savvy. However, its greatest impact may come in areas that have traditionally resisted change.Grassroots football and the global seafood trade may seem worlds apart, but both face similar challenges. ATP was joined by Tariq Cassim, co-Founder and CEO of Koach Hub and Scott Chambers, a co-CEO at Seafood Souq to discuss how transformation is not about shiny new tools. It is about rethinking how value and opportunity are distributed across ecosystems that involve millions of lives.Some of the topics that Tariq and Scott covered in detail include:Before you digitize anything, understand the size and scope of the system you are impacting.If digital transformation threatens established advantage, expect pushback. Plan for trust-building as carefully as you plan for features.Stakeholder transparency forces clarity. Once they can see the benefits, adoption accelerates.If you want to sell digital transformation, do not sell dashboards, sell value recovery.Immutability builds trust. When stakes are high, data and the reports they produce need to be trusted.

Wealth management is facing a critical inflection point. Legacy systems built decades ago still power many private banks, creating inefficiencies that slow down operations and frustrate clients. Manual processes like emailing PDFs and reconciling data across multiple custodians remain common, leading to errors and missed opportunities.In this episode of ATP, Olzhas Zhiyenkul, Founder of InvestBanq, contends that private banking runs on a fragile trio of Excel, PDFs, and eMail, because rebuilding the multi-layer “wealth stack” requires years of orchestration and leadership courage.Some of the important topics that Oz covered in detail included:The biggest impediment to digital transformation is not technology is disarmingly human: incentives and incumbency. It requires courageous leadership making multi-year investments,Wealth management is harder to digitize than payments because digitizing wealth is orchestration engineering and filled with unseen complexity.Over the next two decades, more than $100 trillion of wealth will shift to millennials and other digital natives. They want “software first, human second” service, with expert help available when it adds real value.Fragmentation is wealth management’s defining feature and is biggest opportunity.The “connect-everything” problem is the core digital wealth management product.

AI is evolving from static question-and-answer systems to dynamic agents capable of reasoning, learning, and making decisions in real time. These intelligent systems rely on vast amounts of data to function, but the real challenge lies not in building the AI itself, but in ensuring that the data feeding it is clean, accurate, and accessible.In this episode of ATP, Shanmuga Muniandy, Director of Architecture & Chief Evangelist, APAC at Denodo, argues that most AI failures are really data failures: stale copies, siloed systems, and patchwork security.Some of the topics that Shan covered in detail included:Agentic AI chains reasoning steps, maintains context, calls tools/APIs, and makes decisions toward a goal.To get accurate agent behavior, data must be complete, clean, contextual, and timely.Real-time decisions require live context, which requires real-time access to data.Business leaders should not need to hunt tables or beg IT for extracts. Self-service data unlocks velocity. It also gives agents stable, well-defined inputs aligned to outcomes.Ethics and regulation should be part of the architecture that drives Agentic AI.

Artificial intelligence and blockchain are no longer separate innovations. They are beginning to merge, creating systems that are both intelligent and trustworthy. AI brings automation, reasoning, and decision-making, while blockchain provides transparency, provenance, and security.On this episode of ATP, Qin En Looi⁠, a Partner at Onigiri Capital & Saison Capital and Ganesh Kompella, a Founding Partner at Tykhe Ventures, highlight that this moment is different because of a shift in mindset and infrastructure.Some of the topics Qin En and Ganesh covered in detail:Together, AI and blockchain unlock 'decentralized intelligence'.The AI and blockchain ecosystem has matured with stronger infrastructure, institutional adoption, and broad developer access.Clear, supportive regulation is shifting from hindering innovation to driving it.While core AI infrastructure may remain centered in the West, Asia’s talent and scale position it to lead in applied AI and blockchain use cases.DeFi will not replace traditional banks but will serve as their middleware, enabling faster, more transparent, and programmable financial services.

The global financial system is entering a period of profound change driven by the convergence of blockchain, artificial intelligence, and decentralized infrastructure. At the center of this transformation is tokenization, which converts real-world assets into programmable digital representations that can move seamlessly across modern, borderless rails.In this episode, Nikhil Joshi, Chief Operating Officer at EMURGO, explores how the convergence of blockchain, AI, and decentralized finance is reshaping global markets.Some of the topics Nikhil covered in detail:Anything can be tokenized, but not everything should be tokenized.Stablecoins are the bridge between traditional finance and decentralized finance.Agentic AI combined with programmable money can lead to automated treasury functionality.Institutional adoption is real, growing and nuanced.Interoperability is essential with payments and settlement rails first, then lending/borrowing, eventually hedging and structured products.

Karl Mohan, EVP Financial Services and GM International at Crypto.com, sheds light on how AI and asset tokenization are revolutionizing the financial landscape. He discusses the shift towards a machine-native financial system and emphasizes how blockchain can enhance transaction transparency. Karl highlights the role of stablecoins in providing services to the unbanked and calls attention to anchoring bias as a major hurdle for crypto adoption. He also explores the evolution of financial tech and the increasing importance of transparency in cross-border transactions.

As digital ecosystems grow more connected, APIs have become the core channels through which data flows, services interact, and innovation happens. But this shift has also introduced new risks.In this episode of ATP, Reuben Koh, Director, Security Strategy - Asia Pacific & Japan at Akamai Technologies, explains how essential APIs are to digital experiences.Some of the topics Reuben covered in detail include:In today's digital world, APIs are no longer behind-the-scenes components—they are mission-critical interfaces that power user experiences, connect systems, and move sensitive data at scale.Despite their proliferation, most organizations have shockingly poor awareness of their own API infrastructure.One of the most revealing insights from Reuben was the scale of API abuse, not just mere attacks. Abuse happens when APIs are used in ways for they were not intended, oftentimes creating malicious, unexpected consequences.In 2024, for the first time, Akamai saw more internet traffic generated by APIs than by humans. Bots now dominate the digital landscape, probing, testing, and exploiting vulnerable endpoints.The finance sector, unsurprisingly, remains the top target for web application and API attacks. Reuben share some shocking examples.

Artificial intelligence has long promised to transform the way businesses operate, but only now are we beginning to see its full potential realized. Early waves of AI focused on prediction and content generation, offering useful but limited support. The newest evolution—autonomous agents—goes further by reasoning, sequencing tasks, and taking meaningful action.In this episode of ATP, Gavin Barfield, CTO and VP of Solution Engineering for ASEAN at Salesforce, explains how this “third wave” of AI is transforming the way businesses operate.Some of the topics that Gavin covered in detail include:The history of AI in business can be broken into waves. We are now entering the autonomous agent era, where AI doesn’t just suggest, but acts.The leap from generative to autonomous AI isn’t just about bigger language models—it’s about the rise of reasoning engines.Autonomous AI is only as good as the data it uses.Far from being merely theoretical, autonomous AI is already proving itself and early use cases are delivering!Gavin stressed that AI agents are not about eliminating humans, but about freeing them from low-value tasks and enabling them to do more meaningful ones.Gavin posited that CEOs will no longer manage purely human workforces. Instead, they will oversee a hybrid of digital agents and human employees.

In many emerging markets, traditional credit systems fail to serve the underbanked because they rely on formal employment records and financial histories that many people simply don’t have. But access to credit doesn’t have to be limited to those with paperwork.In this episode of ATP, we talk to Rene Payan, Country Manager for the Philippines at PayJoy who explains how PayJoy is changing that reality by using smartphones as digital collateral and AI-powered risk models to “find a yes” instead of defaulting to “no.”Some of the topics that Rene covers in detail include:For decades, the underserved and underbanked have been locked out of formal financial systems because they lacked traditional credit histories. PayJoy challenges that orthodoxy with a powerful shift in mindset: instead of searching for reasons to deny credit, the company actively searches for reasons to approve it.Smartphones can be more than devices, PayJoy has developed a unique approach to underwriting: it uses a smartphone’s functionality as digital collateral.PayJoy didn’t start out as a lender. The company originally offered its technology via SaaS to third-party lenders. But when partners failed to replicate PayJoy’s commitment to "finding a yes," PayJoy doubled down on direct lending.Long before AI became a buzzword, PayJoy was deploying machine learning to refine its pricing strategies and risk assessments. The goal isn’t just approval—but optimized approval.What PayJoy is building is not just a credit business, but an embedded finance ecosystem. Customers encounter financial services not in banks, but at retail counters while buying a phone.

Traditional financial systems rely heavily on trust—trust in banks, brokers, custodians, and exchanges. But emerging technologies like blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi) are challenging this model by introducing a trustless, self-custodied approach to asset management. In this episode of ATP, Srikumar Misra, Founder of aarnâ Protocol, explains how decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain technology are reshaping investment and asset management. He breaks down the evolving landscape of digital assets into three key categories: Bitcoin as a store of value, utility-based native tokens, and tokenized real-world assets like real estate or art.Some of the topics Srikumar discussed in detail include:Digital Assets Aren’t One Thing—They’re a SpectrumAccess, Not Just Innovation, Is the Real BreakthroughTrustless systems challenge the status quo. DeFi’s foundational concept of "trustless" finance doesn’t mean mistrust—it means removing the need to trust third-party intermediaries.User Experience Will Make or Break DeFi’s FutureLiquidity and slippage are serious concerns. While DeFi is maturing, it faces critical challenges with liquidity fragmentation. Liquidity infrastructure still lags behind TradFi, which handles trillions in daily volume with minimal price disruption.