‘Financial Inclusion’ might be the most noble sector of financial technology, solving problems the traditional finance industry won’t — servicing underbanked demographics in areas with poor financial infrastructure.
Tackling these challenges, the EFSE Fund and the SANAD Fund for MSME, advised by Finance in Motion, have partnered with Village Capital and the LHoFT to develop the Fincluders Bootcamp 2017, unique investment readiness program designed for entrepreneurs offering inclusive financial products.
In the run up to the event, we caught up with the people behind the startups. This time, we spoke to Gökhan Çaylak, Product and Business Manager at Kredico:
Gökhan Çaylak, Product and Business Manager at Kredico
“Our diverse population is a good place to verify a solution for other parts of the world. If we can make it work in here, we can ship the solution to anywhere.” — Gökhan Çaylak
Could you introduce yourself?
My name is Gokhan Caylak, I have been working in product design and development field almost 5 years. I joined Kredico in the beginning of this year, since then we are building products passionately with a great team. Our team is dedicated to shift our ecosystem to a much more transparent, reliable and transcended state.
What does ‘financial inclusion’ mean to you?
Opportunities vary from region to region, there are number of conflicts in many different regions. This is of course a preeminent challenge for all governments to provide stability.
“Financial inclusion” from our perspective is not just about minimising blackmarket economy, it is providing hope for every person trapped within these external conflicts, it is an opportunity for them to step up and improve their situation. I do not pursue this mission solely, as a whole team we have dedicated ourselves to this cause.
Could you describe the mission of Kredico, and the benefit from a customer perspective?
Kredico aims to change the way of doing business by providing transparency for both parties within a transaction. Providing more background information about client is a game changer for the supplier side. Our purpose is to promote merchants and individuals with integrity whom honour their liabilities on time. If the number of those merchants increase we believe whole ecosystem will benefit from it.
What are the unique challenges and opportunities of your home market?
Turkey lies in the centre of Europe, Russia, Middle East and Mediterranean geographically, so our hands are full of multiple unique challenges. Not only geographical challenges are the issue, we are also facing a new wave of immigrants who are trying to start a new life in our country. Their adoption to system is critical for everyone living in the region. Aside from that, our diverse population is a good place to verify a solution for other parts of the world. If we can make it work in here, we can ship the solution to anywhere. Turkey enables this kind of innovation under a comparatively stable environment from its neighbour countries.
What is your relationship like with the regulator there?
You may know there was a domestic financial crisis for Turkish markets in 2001, after which many new rules were applied to players operating in this field. Thanks to those promising policies we have established strong financial structure for businesses. Before that, high inflation kept us from investing and promoting new tech, but today we can pursue our dreams. Regulations are sometimes outdated and in need of revision, this is another reason for the pace of introducing new technologies. I believe our country will see the benefit and reform into much more adaptable and responsive state.
How does the regulatory landscape differ in developing countries and developed countries? How can we address these differences with FinTech?
It is true that developed countries are enabling the creation of more Fintech companies, however it does not mean that they have the better technology. Thanks to information age, there are many bright companies who have ability to compete. However, developing countries might rely on strict regulations in order to maintain and impose their power of control.
Developing countries are less familiar with new technology and its impact, and therefore are slow to act on adopting new regulations or revising old ones. What we can do to change this, is to promote more sandbox environments to show those governments how the community will function without the regulations, how new technologies can have an impact.
Any final thoughts on Fintech of entrepreneurship you wish to share?
Fintech entrepreneurship will become more important in the following years, before 2008 this field of innovation mostly dominated by corporations with little agility to adapt and slow to decide and start something new. Now we have the chance to utilise vast values in favour of everyone, we do not have to wait for our corporations to introduce new products, we have the opportunity to build what we desire.
