In today’s ‘People Behind Boost’ series, we bring you closer to the man behind our business in Indonesia and how he plays an important role in supporting MSMEs to be financially empowered.
Introducing Stefanus Warsito, who is the CEO of Boost Indonesia. In his role, he is responsible for growing and expanding the lending business and revamping Boost Biz in Indonesia to penetrate supply chain distribution to merchants across the Indonesian market and provide lending solutions to MSMEs in need.
Interestingly, his impressive career didn’t begin in fintech, but rather as a mechanical design engineer for the biggest printing world in the United States. Upon his return to Indonesia, Stefan ventured into the banking industry with multinational banks such as Citibank and HSBC for Risk Strategic and Operation roles. He also worked for Bank Danamon where he managed their overall risk management.
Seeking a new challenge, Stefanus left the corporate world after 12 years of service, where he shifted his focus to the exciting field of startups, becoming the Chief Risk Officer at Modalku - Funding Societies (FS). While at FS, Stefanus not only led the Risk team, but also developed the company’s business model.
So how did Stefanus end up working for Boost? After leaving FS, he joined another Indonesian startup - OVO Financial Services - where he met our very own Group CEO, Sheyantha Abeykoon and well, the rest is history.
Not one to pass up a challenge, Stefanus joined Boost in late 2019 and led the team in building the lending business specific to the Indonesian market. He worked diligently to get on par with some of Indonesia’s top P2P lenders, particularly in the MSME sector within his first two years in the company. After accomplishing this, Stefanus was later assigned to revamp Boost Biz Indonesia and provide a platform for management and financial services to Indonesian MSMEs.
“Success is all in the mindset. There will always be others out there who wants to move mountains and become more successful than you, so my motivation is to always challenge myself to doing things out of my comfort zone and become a better person. That is already success to me,” he said. Stefanus attributes his successful transition into startups as being down to learning the ins and outs from his team and those that have been in the space before him.
When he’s not in office, Stefanus spends most of his time with his family where they love to travel and discover many exciting activities together as a family. Stefanus is also a car enthusiast with a passion for sports and vintage vehicles and is an avid collector of various limited edition scalable cars, a relatively unknown hobby. These cars are mostly 1/18 and 1/12 scales that are modelled exactly by prominent race car drivers, and are hand-built and assembled by a small team of craftsmen with original finishes, materials, archive imagery and drawings to ensure accurate representation of the original car.
On that note, just like his passion in fast cars, he finds motivation in the fast-paced and challenging fintech industry, where he sees an opportunity to serve and bring simplified solutions to help merchants grow their business. The idea of improving and becoming a better person for his family also drives him into pushing boundaries to become #unstoppable. As a problem solver, Stefanus is always looking to create better business models to solve merchant pain points and believes Boost is the perfect environment for this.