Grassroot Communities in South Asia

One unique feature of Singapore is the presence of social communities. One of the most popular communities in FinTech is called “FinTech Choupal”. Choupal is a Hindi word to describe a central village square. It is a platform for discussion, debate and free speech in the village. The group was born in May 2015 as an experiment by Varun Mittal to bring people in payments together for discussion. It grew organically from a place to talk about challenges faced by startups to founders helping each other find resources.  It graduated from there to ultimately be the bridge for startups and regulators to engage in real-time discussion, allowing each side to understand the views and needs of each other.

FinTech Choupal has been the birthplace of some of the most famous initiatives arising out of the grassroots dialogue between startups and MAS. Some of the notable ones have been the creation of Singapore FinTech Association (SFA), spinning off a cousin of Choupal to bring together just the investors for MAS Investor Summit and getting startups a seat at the table during the formulation of several regulatory policies.