The desire to lead an uncomplicated life was mostly shaped by having grown up in Kolkata, India, where Goel says “life was simpler”. Recalling what he calls his “perfect” childhood, he says he would play cricket and football on the streets, run around in the rain and eat lots of street food. 

His father, a tea taster, would sometimes bring him to the office. “I remember finding hundreds of teacups lined up and him taking a sip from each and taking notes. It was interesting to know that such a career existed.” While the experience helped him build an above-average knowledge of tea, it didn’t entice him to make a career out of it.

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Kolkata, often regarded as India’s cultural capital with its colonial architecture, art galleries and festivals, was where Goel developed mindfulness for any blatant display of wealth. “Kolkata is one of the few places where you’re not judged by wealth but intellect. People look down on you if you flex your wealth.”

By holding this mindset from his hometown into his career as a founder, he says it makes life easier. “When I meet somebody for the first time, I keep to a simple introduction and let them form an opinion, judge me, based on our conversation.” His choice of clothing is just as deliberate, with no visible branding that could distract or draw unwanted conversations. 

From Kolkata, however, Goel’s path to entrepreneurship wasn’t so straightforward. “I took the tried and tested Indian route to education and took an engineering degree. Then did programming for a couple of years, before I moved into finance and did an MBA,” he says. 

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After working in technology and private equity in India for about five years, he felt the urge to explore the rest of the world. He got a job at Masan Group, one of the largest conglomerates in Vietnam, where he was introduced to the world of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). 

During this time, he came to a realisation: “The real fun is when you’re in the driver’s seat as an owner.” So he reached out to a close friend and colleague, Scott Tan, who mooted to him the idea of moving to Singapore to start a business together. 

“That became the start of my entrepreneurship journey.”

A month after Goel left Masan Group in 2014, he and Tan set up the M&A advisory firm Taipan Partners, which works with clients across Asia. Goel remains a managing partner of the firm today.

About two years into Taipan, Goel met Vikas Nahata, now his co-founder at Validus and a fellow Kolkata native, at a friend’s gathering. The pair quickly got along and Nahata, who had already set up the company, asked Goel if he wanted to join him. Goel came on board as co-founder in 2016.

With capital from institutional investors, Validus provides financing solutions, such as short-term business loans, to small and medium enterprises across Southeast Asia.

“The maths made sense,” says Goel about the time when Nahata first told him about Validus’ mission. “There was a large addressable market. If he manages to solve the complex problem, the results would justify the hard work.”

The complexity of SME lending he refers to lies in the market it serves: “It’s very, very difficult to assess the risk of these small businesses because there is no data available.”

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Validus’ solution to the problem is to double down on forging partnerships and focusing on the supply chain. “We went to large corporations asking if they could give us a list of all their vendors, suppliers, dealers and distributors, along with data on them, so we know who these people are,” says Goel. From payment records to the details of their working relationships, the Validus team gathered the information quietly during the company’s early years. 

“Most venture capitalists did not like [what we were doing], because it did not sound hyper scalable, sexy or high tech. But when you lend money out, you also have to get it back. So while everybody else was trying different things, we stuck with this method.”

With the help of word of mouth and minimal marketing, Validus’ network of partners grew. It now works with about 200 corporations. It has disbursed more than US$4 billion across 100,000 loans in Singapore, Indonesia (where it operates under the name Batumbu), Thailand and Vietnam. According to Goel, Validus averages about US$150 million in new loan disbursals a month, making it one of if not the largest SME lending marketplaces in Southeast Asia.

With millions more SMEs to tap into (Indonesia alone has 62 million), Goel says Validus plans to double down on growing its presence and efforts in the four countries, before expanding elsewhere.

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Since starting in 2015, Validus has raised about US$75 million in equity funding from investors including Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, Dutch bank FMO, NongHyup Financial Group, Lotte F&L and Aizawa Asset Management. 

Last September, it secured a debt facility of up to US$50 million from HSBC to propel its digital lending efforts for SMEs in Indonesia.

The company overall is not yet profitable—though its Indonesian unit has been for about three years—but Goel says he hopes for this to change by the end of the first quarter of 2025. 

Despite this, when asked about fundraising for the future, Goel shares that the new round that Validus is launching will, for the first time, be focused on securing “money to use for strategic purposes”. He hinted at some ideas he had for the capital, including obtaining other types of lending licences or growing its M&A unit. Validus previously made two M&As: KlearCard’s business payments and expenses management technology platform in 2021 and Citi Singapore’s small business banking loan portfolio the following year. 

“The first decade was about finding our feet, growing from children to young men and women,” says Goel. “Now, it’s about taking that foundation and building it into a solid institution.”

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Here, we ask Goel a few quickfire questions to learn more about what makes him tick.

What is the one lesson that took you a while to learn?

Nikhilesh Goel (NG): That the smartest people, at least IQ-wise, are not necessarily the best people for our company. 

How would you describe the Validus team then?

NG: I wouldn’t say we are a bunch of introverts, but I think we are people who are a lot quieter, calmer, more mature and speak in a measured way. So if there is a problem or crisis, which is always around the corner for a startup, there is never chaos or commotion. There is never finger-pointing or voices being raised. We will get into a room and the only question asked is, “Something has gone wrong, what can I do to help?” And that’s just beautiful.

What do people often find surprising about you? 

NG: I get a lot of feedback, even from within my company, that I can be intimidating. And I’ve never raised my voice in the office. I’m extremely calm, with probably a very serious look on my face. I’ve been told to smile a lot more in the office and end my WhatsApp messages with a smiley, not a full stop.  

So have you done that? 

NG: The smiling, I try. The emoticons, I don’t think it’s for me.

What do you feel about fundraising in Southeast Asia?

NG: I find very few investors have the courage and intellectual capacity to invest in business models that have never been tried anywhere in the world and that have been built purely for Southeast Asia.

How do you approach negative feedback about your product or business model?

NG: I take the feedback factually, dissect it, try to take out the good versus bad, take the elements that can help us construct or build a better business and discard the rest. 

But I also tell everybody that my policy is to hear everyone, listen to no one.

What’s an issue you wish more entrepreneurs talked about?  

NG: The toll of entrepreneurship. You sign up for something that takes away a lot from you—family time and health for example. There is an insane amount of stress and anxiety, and I had no idea about this when I started up. 

It is extremely lonely because the world might be falling apart. You may not have funding, the losses may be high and people may be quitting, but when you turn up in the office, you have to turn up without a single frown on your face because every single person is looking at you. If they see the CEO or founder extremely stressed out, then everybody panics without anybody having spoken a word, right? So as a leader, you can’t amplify the stress. You have to absorb it. 

If given the chance, would you choose to do this all again?

NG: Yes, because I would rather do it, suck at it, fail at it than always live with the thought of what if.

This article is part of Founder Stories, a series dedicated to discovering the untold stories and challenges of today’s entrepreneurs on their climb to the top.

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