Creating Value for Customers with Naveen Asrani from Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Speaker A: Almost good is not good enough. You have to be awesome. And it takes a lot of work behind the rails of business and innovation customers like you who keep constantly making sure looking around the corner about where the future is going to go and what value you're going to unlock for your customers.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Payments Powerhouses podcast where we discuss current trends with the movers and shakers in the fintech industry. Brought to you by Tusi2p, your trusted payment solutions provider in Asia and beyond.

Speaker C: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Payments Powerhouses. I'm Suhan, your host for today. And today with us in the studio we have Navin Asrani from AWS. Navin is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of experience in building of ecosystems, categories and products. His current role at AWS is the head of strategic growth, digital businesses and ISVs. Welcome to the show, Navin.

Speaker A: Thank you. Glad to have you here.

Speaker C: Great. So, Navin, I see that we have something in common. We were both in advertising before we venture into fintech and startups. How do you go from advertising to helping startups to scale and grow? Can you walk us through?

Speaker A: So, you know, uh, Suhan, uh, that's a really nice question because I think, you know, advertising taught me a lot about understanding every customer across scale, whether it's print, digital, audio, visual, across the spectrum. But more importantly, is you're actually serving them what they think they need or what you think they need in a manner in which is enough for them to have a nudge. But the challenge is that you don't create the need as a person. I wanted to serve, but I also wanted to cook the gravy in the kitchen. So while I was a steward of the customer's trust and understanding of how to present a value, I was intrinsically abstracted away from creating the value. And that's what got me to going backwards. So if you just think of advertising as the menu and I'm the steward who comes in and serves you and I actually give you a menu, the challenge is I have no control over the menu. I can only smile at you and give you whatever is available that time. The kitchen is deciding the food or the coffee or the pastry. I'm just standing there and telling you this menu is at this price. And that was actually the reason why I got in. When I learned and I saw customers upfront, I felt I need to go to the kitchen to create value. And that's what got me from, you know, the advertising stint of around, uh, seven, seven and a half years to Moving to Sun Microsystems where I could be part of the kitchen. And I moved into actually helping our ISVs in which were telcos, banks, everyone else looking at solutions for oss, BSS related and moving their applications onto sun hardware and using Java as the platform. And so we started creating the kitchen there.

Speaker C: So was it challenging moving towards the kitchen? I would say so.

Speaker A: You know, uh, when you're focused on the customer, the story is less about you and it's about them. So if you're really excited and you know, you have this belief of being a builder at your heart, how you serve is critical, but what you serve is even more important. The value should be the product you serve. So what happens is you actually understand and build from a customer's need perspective. So the kitchen tells you whether you have an ability to affect variable at scale. Right. And you should leave unlocking of value by the customer. So that's the journey.

Speaker C: Yeah. And every challenge is different. Every customer has its very specific requirements as well. And I guess that's where the challenge or the uh, fun begin.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Because you have to find a specific tools we need for our kitchen to help fit the puzzle, so to speak.

Speaker A: So I'll give you an example. Right. You have the same onions, the tomato, the garlic, meat, the curry, pepper, spices. You can make a Thai curry out of it, you can make a continental pasta out of it, or you can make an Indian meal out of it. So the ingredients are the same. It's what others unlock value for it is what makes it interesting. And that's why the kitchen gets interesting.

Speaker C: Awesome. So I think it's a gradual move. Talking about your current role right now at aws as the head of strategic growth and Digital Native and ISVs, could you give us a quick introduction to what exactly is AWS and how it helps businesses?

Speaker A: Yeah, AWS or Amazon Web Services is it's a platform That's Genesis around 2006, primarily from the intent of serving the bigger, broader Amazon itself as a business. AWS is born from the understanding and building technology that Amazon.com had originally needed. But if you actually look today we have around 200 full featured services that are served to our customers globally. And we've got millions and millions of customers, thousands of partners, including y', all, that's built on an infrastructure that actually scales 99 availability zones across 31 geographical, uh, regions and 15 availability zones coming in and five geographical regions coming in including Canada, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand and Thailand. So we are seeing that that infrastructure is what we build out and Let our customers and our partners innovate on top of that. And that has been the reason why the platform has been trusted globally with some of the most innovative companies across the world. The reason why I say innovative is because startups and digital native businesses like yours predominantly change business models or change an experience or change the entire canvas of the industry. That's what we have seen across the spectrum with customers like Netflix Grab here in the region, Lyft in the us, Stripe Slack to name a few. And I think that's what excites us, uh, me to be at AWS predominantly. That's what is AWS all about. It's about allowing customers to innovate and build solutions and opportunities for their customers and serve them better at a scale with millisecond latency across so many regions.

Speaker C: For your role self, what is your scope? What do you cover?

Speaker A: I'm a product guy actually Suhan, and if you realize I must be looking at building products and I gave you the analogy of a kitchen, if you actually look at some of the startups when I started off around M8 to 10 years ago is to actually help them build products and help them scale those products. So today what I do is actually work with some of our largest unicorns and digital native businesses in Southeast Asia helping them build new products, new revenue streams and new market expansions. And that's what I do.

Speaker C: Any memorable experiences so far? I'm sure there's tons but are you able to cite some examples?

Speaker A: I always say that it's like asking a parent which child do you like? Right. Every child is special. I'll give you an example. Right. With 2C 2P itself, you know, using machine learning, helping build the infrastructure. It can seem very non glamorous but I'll tell you, it's that moment which you have because customers trust your rails and you are the payment rails for a large part of the businesses across the world. As you look at acceptances and you know, cost border payments and various forms of payments, omnichannel service payments. And if you look at that, it may not seem to be newsworthy, but it's the trust. So every day you know, 2C 2P will be there, right. And that itself makes it memorable that people will assume things will work and you actually are in the background.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's like making sure the engine keeps going. That's the most important.

Speaker A: And it's a similar thing, you know, with businesses and customers too across the world. Every time a customer assumes they're getting a ride, they Assume that the driver is going to take them to a point A, to point B. They trust the systems to orchestrate it all. Now, below that, it could be a platform, below that AWS infrastructure that's running. But what matters to the customer is everything is working. And, you know, I think we earn trust every day with our customers. If you actually say that, no news is good news. That's how it becomes for the customer. Right. The trust in platforms, for them to be better served, like in payments or in other industries, is what keeps us going.

Speaker C: Uh, there's a lot of hard work going behind the scenes. It's just that you don't see it.

Speaker A: It's like a kitchen. Everyone's doing the dishes and someone's cooking, but you just never see it because there's a builder out there who has decided to innovate. So the thing about startup, what excites me is anyone can be a builder because, um, there's no barriers to entry today. And that's the reason what keeps me awake every morning and brings me to work.

Speaker C: It's even easier today compared to years ago. Depending on what you want to do, you just can go online, type in and there's the digital tools available. So it's great fun and I guess talking about digital native businesses and ISVs. So C2P is also one of the earliest, uh, Asian fintechs to have worked with AWS to scale its business operations. We moved our infrastructure to AWS cloud, I think sometime back in 2014. Are you able to share a little bit more about the beginnings of this relationships between us? Yeah. Was there a focus on payment of fintech startups back then for AWS?

Speaker A: I think our relationship started in 2014. So we're celebrating our 10th anniversary soon. So actually, you know, I've been with AWS almost five years and I've been part of the journey. One of the things which I heard from a, uh, talk that Kunmiao had done, you know, in 2021 at the AWS summits. At that time, prior to moving to AWS or before he moved to the cloud, actually Khun Miao and the team and Qunong together had taken a decision because they were looking at high availability and scalability and reliability that that time pre cloud, their downtime was 24 hours and that was not acceptable in an industry which was moving rapidly. And you want to serve customers globally who are looking at Southeast Asia as a market. Right. You are literally the gateway into Southeast Asia from a payments perspective. And so I think in 2014 they moved to AWS and I think the team did a bunch of things together. I would call out the account manager, the solution architect and the technical account manager then because a lot of work went in those days, I think not just about making it viable from uh, you know, to C2P to move to AWS, you know, because I know they were earning in a hybrid environment. But more importantly was about their faith and belief that they were willing to change what was the paradigm in the industry on being on prem moving to the cloud. So I think that's where I would like to say, you know, that comes from Kunmiao and Kunang and the teams who were there. And then they also were actually being lighthouse bearers for the rest of the region because financial services is known to take its time to be deliberate. And you know, you've got regulatory, you've got institutions who govern the entire environment and a lot of that requires education, time and effort. So I think the move in the initial years was primarily to kind of advise, share, give insights on how this could shape the industry today. When you look back, it's very easy to say it was the obvious choice. But I know a lot of work went in there during the time from the leadership at 2C 2P as well as the AWS team. So that was the initial journey and I think that brought 2C 2P to a point where you were actually scaling customers across Southeast Asia. Uh, I know this has been a journey to build a global company from Southeast Asia. So I think over the years, you know, our infrastructure was part of the journey with 2C 2P and we've seen that scale exponentially across markets. So that's also been a very important insights about how this was not just an aws journey, but Tusi 2p actually that was willing to take risks. Risks which at that time not many people had seen. Right. But are willing to shape the future and that's what got them there. And I think post that they're on five nines, which is 99.999% availability, scalability, reliability, security. And I think a lot of insights from 2C 2P's journey helped us unlock value for our customers globally too.

Speaker C: Yeah, like you mentioned earlier, uh, about regulations. Right. So as you know, regulations surrounding payments. 2C3 was the first client of AWS to request for payment card industry 3D Secure certification or better known as PCI 3DS for AWS data centers in Singapore and Japan in 2019. And this was subsequently rolled out to AWS data Centers globally. And that's something we worked together. We also have worked together on a couple of marketing initiatives as well, which is the most recent one where we had uh, a webinar for SMBs. So how is working with a, uh, payments focused business different from your other experience?

Speaker A: I think every customer is critical in their own way. So there's no differentiated way but their journeys and their approach to serving customers. But I actually want to go back to, you know, uh, some of the innovation that you mentioned about certification. That's what excites about being at AWS. Right. A, uh, customer need from 2C 2P was a requirement. You listen to what the customer is saying. Probably it's got broader implications and this is why, you know, our customers tell us where we need to go. Also, whilst we are building solutions and infrastructure, uh, our customers are not stuff for us all the time and it's for culture. So I think thank you for your insights on the requirements that the regulatory industry, especially for credit card processing required. And I think the teams across the account manager, solution architect and the TAM work together. So you know, of course the global teams across the world that made that happen. But I think to your point, an insight and an idea or a need can come from anywhere in the world. Now the reason why I'm going back to that is the payments industry is very critical to a customer. Any act that can affect that customer trust can have ripple effects at scale. You must have seen this yourself personally, when you lose $10 when you dropped it, you will be really disturbed for like next few hours. But if you go and spend $150 on a good meal, you don't worry about it because you have an accountability to where that money went. Right. So payments is like that. It's a very sensitive business because everyone takes payments very seriously and very personally. It's the customers, the partners, the infrastructure, everyone else. Payments is that intersection where intention meets action. Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, it's the exchange of value. Right.

Speaker A: Economic value. And so therefore the industry has very high expectations and it has expectations from itself, from its partners. It's the customers. So your customers tend to believe in you. Right. The reason, the pursuit of why. Actually, you know, Kunmiao and uh, Qunong wanted 99.999 availability was because of that, because it's an industry that expects nothing less. And that's one of the things which we learned and I think that's one thing which resonates with aws because for us, you know, payments is also very critical from a security uh, perspective. So security is day zero for us at aws. So payments trust are very critical. It also attracts value of customers, partners, ecosystems, yield for businesses globally. Right. In real time, almost in near real time. And that's why the payment industry is such a critical player.

Speaker C: Yeah. And of course, you take the best practices from the payment industry and you can apply it to other emerging sectors as well, or other existing industries.

Speaker A: I think every industry gives you insights. So I'll give you an example. When you're taking a ride in a cab, milliseconds, decide whether you're actually going to take that cab ride or not, because you'll then decide, you know, what the other provider is. Three minutes away or two minutes away, right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Shorter time or when you see a lag in an OTT platform for even a second when the video is getting buffered. So that's why at aws, we also look at infrastructure that can give seamless experience for our customers. And that's why some of the best brands across and global businesses trust us. Because almost good is not good enough. You have to be awesome. And it takes a lot of work behind the rails of business and innovation. Customers like you, who keep constantly making sure, looking around the corner about where the future is going to go and what value you're going to unlock for your customers. And you are rest assured that, you know, AWS is there with you.

Speaker C: So you briefly talk about AWS goes where the customer takes you. So we've wanted to talk about AI right now. Are, uh, you guys involved in AI? Yeah.

Speaker A: So, you know, artificial intelligence and machine learning have been around for like a number of years, right. At AWS, we've got, you know, SageMaker, which is a tool to allow us to help rapidly build, train and deploy m machine learning models. So there are lots of them across the board. And you know, artificial intelligence and machine learning is constantly evolving. Right? Because what you're doing is essentially using data sets to actually train machines for decisions. Right. And to help you in insights, you actually look around and I think that's the value customers create. It's the value which you look at transaction data, uh, customer experience data, uh, forecasting models and predicting where business needs to go, because that's what helps you look around the corner. So whether you need a personalized experience, it's AI ML behind the scenes. So that's the beauty about it. It also requires data sets at scale because customer data sets are there. So you example, have a lot of visibility to payment transaction data and that helps you predict fraud. Or what would you call unnatural transactions. Right. You would look at that using AWS infrastructure. So AIML is around and you can unlock the value using technology from aws, but using data sets from your side because you know it intrinsically leverages the insights that you have and then unlocks the value that you want from your business. Because it's not for AWS to know, it's about what you can do with it. So that's what we try and do as builders. We provide the tools and the platforms and the value you unlock is left to you and your data science team or even your developer and architect can use. So, so based on your, your team is what we do.

Speaker C: Yeah. In some ways it's not like the magic formula or magic truth or aura. Uh, it's as good as your data sets as well, what you input.

Speaker A: And it's also what value is intrinsically important for businesses because you're in the business of actually adding value to your customer and what you look for is material that keeps that trust.

Speaker C: So you talk a lot about trust as well. You have worked with many startups. What do you think is the challenge for them to scale or uh, to maintain trust?

Speaker A: I've been a product guy and that's what got me to startups actually. Founders put themselves out there along with their founding team to do it all. Khunmiao Kwanong is the same example that, you know, trying to build a global company from Thailand. So the area which is very critical is for founders to look at whether they want to be mile wide, inch deep or inch wide, mile deep. Now the reason I'm saying this is you can mean something to someone or nothing to everyone. So what happens is founders build products and sometimes they want to build platforms. If your product has been intrinsically built at scale and you have understood global trends across geographies, across markets, across segments, then you're in a position to build a platform. And sometimes what happens is founders go wide, not deep. Now the challenge when you go wide is unless you have a, uh, mote of money or a mote of technology that doesn't allow anyone to come in, it's not easy to sustain that. And you know, with macro headwinds, when funding gets harder, it's just better to be sharper and what, uh, I would say frugal on resources and specific rather than wide because then it could be hard to sustain yourself. It's easier to just build a product first, understand the segment you're trying to target. What pain point are you solving? What's your depth of that problem. So one of the best examples is you are an omnichannel layer for payments and you're probably among the best across Southeast Asia. Right. If not the world. Right. What you've done is being so deep at it that you've ensured your customers trust your transaction, your availability, your customer experience, your integrations with other forms of payment channels that your customers can expect to C2B is there no matter what,

Speaker C: uh, is it also depending on the growth stage of the company or startups itself as well? Yeah.

Speaker A: So also what does happen is even if your growth stage, right. We've seen some of large businesses have missteps where they scale across geographies because the reason is you have to also constantly evolve your product across geographies because the M customer's maturity in that market may have been different. So what is table stakes in one market is just bells and whistles in another market. And I think you at 2C 2B itself is evolving in the way you're building the platform out from the customer feedback out of Southeast Asia. You've transformed because what's got you here can't take you elsewhere. Right. So your growth also has to be based on the geographies you serve and the markets you serve, uh, and the segments you serve. And very different from the initial, probably the first 10, 15 years of where you were.

Speaker C: Likewise, it really depends on your customer base, your customer's environment and also their

Speaker A: demands and businesses as well, and the cost to serve. So you're trying to build efficiency in the rails and that's what helps businesses scale and grow because they're focused on a set of problems or a set of adjacent problems or a specific problem. And they don't go broad for a while till they hit inflection point when they know they've got material value and they realize that the category they're playing is needs to grow and they can go upstream or downstream and that's why they add other playbooks. If you don't, what happens is it's very hard for you to materialize your relationship. And we all live in a subscription world. Right. A customer can opt out as much as they can opt in. So churn is your biggest challenge.

Speaker C: So focus is very important and I guess also knowing when to pivot or change.

Speaker A: So one of the things I always say is businesses can pivot and people shouldn't because your businesses are what you shape, but your values are something you don't. And what I like about Kunong and Khunmiao has been the values of building 2C 2B. They've never forgotten their roots. And, you know, I've seen them for like five years now. Super humble, first of all, and very accessible, very willing to listen. And I think that's what keeps the culture inside the company. But they also want to make a difference. So I'll tell you two examples that kind of got me and why 2C 2B so personal to me. The first one was, I think in 2019, and this was in, uh, November. Jackathep, who's the account manager, also known as Kun Yi, he, the account manager and the solution architect, was scheduled to go to Myanmar to actually go and run a session, uh, at the university, local university there. And this was fundamental technology 101 on cloud. And Khun Ma went there. Kunong could not go, but Kunong's dad went there. You know, it showed so much that this was so important to him that he put the next best person, which is his dad, to go there. And it's not about the company, it's about the values. He believes that talent like this can be given a chance, and why not educate them and give them a crash course? You know, a small tutorial. It spoke so much about both of them as leaders. The other area, you know, I think this was when Covid started. So one of the areas which was there was to raise donations for Oxygen Cylinders. This was for Mirror Foundation. And I really like the fact that they were willing to put the rails of the business to collect donations and contributions from people from different parts of the world, wherever they were, from different places. And this was using your rails to actually make a difference. I think AWS and 2C 2B work, both the leaderships work there. But I thought that was like a really nice thing, which gave me a lot about the kind of people they were and that values that they are holding. 2C 2B as an organization, listen to your customer, um, be where they are, be where they want them to be, show up when it matters. A lot of attributes that come in, and I think that's what make great businesses. Right? And I think one of the other areas which I think you and Eric had worked on this was the white paper for the payments and for the industry. And I remember the conversation with you and the team was about how do we give a narrative of the payments industry from Southeast Asia so that everyone looks at this industry in a different way from a, uh, lens of Southeast Asia to. And I think kudos to you and the team and IDC and everyone else. Because what you're doing is willing to put yourselves out there to indicate to the industry what good looks like or where the industry is going to shape. So I think this helping people who are impacted during COVID paying it Forward, shows me a lot about leadership. And those are values that are timeless. It's not about what can I get out of it today? And that speaks to the business and the company.

Speaker C: Yeah, those are, uh, great stories to share because this year is actually two C2P's 20th anniversary and we certainly want to celebrate all of our big and small moments. And AWS is certainly part of that as well. So as a partner of 2C 2P, we'd like to send a congratulatory message to the team.

Speaker A: You know, it seems like just like yesterday, we all knew each other, right? And businesses and platforms and what we build grow quickly. And it's a testament. I don't think you're a 20 year old company. You don't behave like a 20 year old company. You're very young, agile, pushing it out there. At aws, we say there's no compression algorithm for experience. So you've got the experience and the wisdom of 20 years, but you got the energy of a 12 to 13 year old. I wish you the very best in 20. And you know, you, since you say it's 20 years old and it's really a privilege of being part of the journey, but more importantly is you are, uh, bringing in something which is really nice, which is the agility of youth with the wisdom of 20 years. So I presume there's going to be more around the corner.

Speaker C: Thank you, Naveen. Thank you so much. With that, we've hit the end of the podcast. Thank you for your time.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, Sohan, for having me here today. It's really a privilege. 20 years is not easy. And 20 years has been a lot of joy, adding value and making a difference to businesses. I want to thank Kunong Khun, Myu, Kun Piachart and Kun Jussi for being part of the journey with us. And the account manager, solution architect and the technical account manager, because there are so many of them, Kuni Khun Watson. Everyone from AWS wants to wish you guys. So on behalf of the aws team, happy 20.

Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you, David. Uh, thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed the podcast, subscribe or follow this show, you can also find 2C2P on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. To read more about this conversation, go to 2C2P.com blog.