When Dhruv Arora was growing up in India, his mother gave him an important piece of financial advice: put your money in a bank.
But Alola, now Founder of Singapore fintech platform Syfequickly realized that following his mother’s advice meant his money would “do absolutely nothing.”
“We have a pretty strong savings culture,” Arora said, citing Asia’s often unstable economic and policy history. But inflation and low interest rates will eventually erode the value of household savings. Because of the effects of inflation, “over time, the $100 you put in the bank doesn’t become $101, it actually becomes $98.”
Asian households sometimes keep up to 50% of their net worth in cash rather than investments or assets. By comparison, in developed markets such as the United States and Europe, the figure is closer to 15%.
But conservative attitudes in Asia are starting to change. Asians are getting richer, prompting them to explore different investment options. The strong performance in equity markets has also fueled a new wave of retail investors in the Asia-Pacific region.
Economists at HSBC wrote in a Jan. 9 report that “Asian households are slowly venturing into equities,” but also noted that “overall equity investment remains quite low.” The bank predicts that a steady shift from low-yielding cash to higher-yielding investments will mean “more money will continue to flow into equities over the next few years”, reducing reliance on foreign investors.
In recent years, a large number of fintech applications have emerged to cater to the growing interest in investing and wealth management among Asian users. These alternative finance platforms, such as Syfe, Stashaway and Endowus, often offer a range of investment options, from cash management to managed portfolios and options trading. Arora said the challenge was to “bridge the gap between holding money and growing wealth” and “give more people the confidence to put their savings to work”.
Arora began his career as an investment banker at UBS in Hong Kong in 2008, shortly after the onset of the global financial crisis. Although Asia is recovering relatively quickly, Arora notes that professionals in the region are accumulating wealth but not knowing how to manage it. “These are smart people, like doctors, lawyers and consultants, who are doing well professionally but just don’t know what to do with their money,” he said.
He launched Syfe in 2019, just months before another global crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the pandemic ended up being an opportunity for fintech platforms like Syfe. “It became a catalyst for a shift in investor behavior,” Arora explained, because people suddenly had time to participate in financial markets.
For example, in the United States, people stuck at home began to participate in stock trading through platforms such as Robinhood. Fueled by social media, these retail investors began trading heavily in so-called meme stocks like Gamestop and AMC.
Syfe has since expanded from its home market of Singapore into new Asia-Pacific economies such as Australia and Hong Kong. The platform’s user base and company revenue continue to grow, and the company claims to be profitable in the fourth quarter of 2025. Arora said it is now a “self-sustaining organization”.
Syfe completed an $80 million Series C round last year and is backed by major investors including New York-based Valar Ventures and British investment firm Unbound.
According to the company, users of the platform generated $2 billion worth of returns last year while saving $80 million in fees.
Currently, Arora hopes to deepen Syfe’s presence in existing markets. Last year, the platform began rolling out customized products for its users, such as private credit for accredited investors looking to diversify their portfolios on Syfe. Syfe will launch options trading in 2026.
Arora noted that over time, many of Syfe’s users have become increasingly willing to take on greater investment risk, moving away from putting money into Syfe-managed portfolios to more actively trading brokerage and income portfolios.
Ultimately, however, he hopes to introduce Syfe into new markets in North Asia and the Middle East, which have large populations of what Arora calls the “affluent masses” who have significant investable assets and above-average incomes but are still not high-net-worth individuals.
“This population has historically been ‘stuck in the middle’: too big for basic retail banking but often underserved by traditional private banks,” he explains.
This story was originally published on wealth network