SME  /  TECH & INNOVATION

By FedEx | March 30, 2026

​​Ilya Kravtsov’s fintech startup, Ringkas, is leveraging AI to help underbanked Indonesians unlock access to home financing. In this interview, Ilya shares how the startup has grown since its launch in 2022.

For far too many Indonesians, the dream of buying one’s own home remains out of reach. Currently, about 9.8 million families do not own homes; and out of these, six million live in dwellings that are structurally unsafe and lack proper sanitation.

One crucial barrier to home ownership in Indonesia is limited access to financing. Despite being Southeast Asia’s largest economy, Indonesia’s mortgage-to-GDP ratio remains especially low – just 3.4% in 2024. This reflects structural constraints, including the difficulty many potential home buyers face in qualifying for mortgage financing.

Traditional mortgage processes tend to exclude informal workers, who comprise close to 60% of the country’s labor force. And banks typically require official documentation such as pay slips, tax returns, and credit histories, which many informal workers lack. To bridge this gap, financial institutions need alternative ways to assess a home buyer’s creditworthiness.

Enter fintech entrepreneur Ilya Kravtsov, who is transforming mortgage financing in Indonesia with Ringkas. This digital mortgage platform uses AI tools to rapidly analyze a customer’s creditworthiness. Through Ringkas, home buyers can submit a single application to multiple banks, get AI-powered recommendations for loan products, and transfer existing mortgages to other lenders with more competitive rates.

By partnering with leading banks and real estate firms, Ringkas delivers its services directly through the platforms that buyers already use to search for houses – turning the home owning process into a seamless digital journey. These deep partnerships have fueled the startup’s rapid growth and helped build investor confidence. In May 2025, it secured USD 5.1 million in pre-Series A funding to accelerate its expansion across Southeast Asia.

Today, Ringkas disburses USD 1-2 billion in mortgages annually through its platform and serves customers in 50 cities. Building on this success, the fintech startup was recently featured in Forbes Asia’s 100 to Watch list. We asked co-founder Ilya to share his key strategies for growth and his approach to implementing AI.

Ringkas is the third startup you’ve launched as a serial fintech entrepreneur. Looking back, what’s the thread that connects all your startups?

Ilya Kravtsov: A few themes are common to all the startups I’ve founded. Firstly, all of them are in fast-growing markets where I believe the maximum impact can be created. 

Secondly, all of them are linked to fintech in one way or another. I believe the financial industry is more open to technological disruption as it requires less manufacturing, logistics, and heavy operational capabilities. Finally, all of them are with co-founders with whom I enjoy working a lot. The people aspect of entrepreneurship is very important for me.

Ringkas has grown exponentially over the last 4 years. What were the key strategies you adopted that led to such rapid growth?

Our key growth hack was B2B partnerships. We secured large distribution partners from the beginning to unlock larger loan volumes, and focused on building strong working relationships with banks. Currently, we have 33 bank partners including the largest Sharia bank in Asia. This B2B2C approach has worked very well for us. With minimum marketing or sales budget, we’ve managed to create a large-scale business.

As the co-founder of an AI-driven company, how has AI changed the type of people you hire and the skills you value most at Ringkas?

We are a product-led company. If we can achieve something using tech (rather than hire people), we will always do so. In that sense, half of our headcount is made up of product and engineering roles. Finding good AI engineers is very difficult and we have a very rigorous process for selecting the best talent. Our engineering center is in Vietnam, where we believe there is a lot of great talent.

Are there any areas where you deliberately avoid using AI in your company?

We have a few principles on using AI, and there is no area where we don’t use it as long as those principles are applied. Some of our principles include: 

• You own everything you submit.
• AI amplifies your judgement but doesn’t replace it. 
• Upgrade your sense of what “great” looks like. 
• Don’t submit what you can’t explain.

What AI capability do you think most founders overestimate or underestimate?

I think the main risk for founders is making half-hearted decisions related to AI. If you implement AI, it has to be done all the way and not just for cosmetic changes. This often means that founders will face hard decisions. It’s important to make those decisions and not avoid them.

What AI trend do you think will follow agentic AI in the next 3-5 years?

Here are my key predictions. I believe that different large language models (LLMs) will converge in terms of quality, and price will become the main differentiator. I also foresee that the application layer will not necessarily be built by LLM companies, but by companies who can refine the distribution and user experience earlier and better than others.

What is your greatest business failure that you treasure the most?

I fail daily. Many of my assumptions don’t work out and that’s fine. The key is to be aware of timelines, be able to iterate fast, and learn from my mistakes. Process and methodology are more important than one single outcome.

Finally, what’s the newest thing you’ve learned as a co-founder?

For the first time in my career, I don’t need to make my own slides anymore. Claude Opus 4.6 with extended thinking does them for me.