Embedded Finance Review Podcast, episode 9. Published 20 September 2024. Guests: Vladimira Bristenska and Nadeem Shaikh, co-founders of Neem. Host: Lars Markull.
Lars Markull: Welcome to the Embedded Finance Review Podcast. My name is Lars Markull. In all previous podcast episodes we spoke about embedded finance companies, use cases and industry news. Today we want to take a look at a specific country and understand how embedded finance works over there. That's why I'm speaking to Vladimira Bristenska and Nadeem Shaikh from Pakistan. The two are founders of infrastructure provider Neem.
In this podcast I'm speaking to them about how Pakistan is different to other countries, why they decided to found Neem in Pakistan, and which industries are most interested in embedded finance.
Before we dive into the episode, a short reminder that our fourth Embedded Finance Review event is taking place on October 10th in Berlin. We have a great lineup of speakers and plenty of time for networking. Visit embeddedfinancereview.com for more details and your free ticket. And now let's dive in.
Welcome
Lars Markull: Vladimira, hi Nadeem. How are you doing today? And since it's just a cold and rainy day in Berlin, how is the weather in Pakistan?
Nadeem Shaikh: Hi Lars. Thank you for having us both. Hello. We are in sunny Karachi, so the weather here is beautiful. So it's really actually a really good time of the year.
Lars Markull: Amazing. I just travelled back from India to Germany last week, and we still had a couple of warm days over here in Berlin, so that made the transition easier, but now it's a really rainy day. Anyway, we're not here to talk about weather and things like this. We are going to talk a lot about fintech and specifically embedded finance in Pakistan. I'm really excited to personally learn a lot more about the ecosystem. But maybe perhaps before we dive into what matters in the ecosystem, let's do a quick intro about yourselves, and specifically maybe each of you can say, how did you basically end up in the Pakistani embedded finance fintech ecosystem?
Vladimira's route to Pakistan
Vladimira Bristenska: So my name is Vladimira Bristenska, and I'm one of the three co-founders. I think we are two of us on the call, but we are missing our third leg, as we say. He's our mentor. His name is Naeem Zafar.
But okay, so a little bit how we ended up, or maybe how I ended up in Pakistan, which by the way is a question I get, or I've been asked quite a lot from people. As you mentioned, what is this white woman doing in a country like Pakistan? But it's actually quite a beautiful story.