FinTech Interview with Alexander Kurchin, Head of Business & Growth at inDrive Money

FTB News DeskJune 3, 202526 min

Insight into scaling fintech innovation, empowering gig workers, and building sustainable impact across emerging markets.

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Alexander Kurchin, Head of Business & Growth at inDrive Money

Author Bio: Alexander is Head of Business & Growth at inDrive.Money, the financial services vertical at inDrive, the world’s second-most downloaded ride-hailing app. inDrive, operating in 888 cities across 48 countries, is currently expanding into other mobility and urban services beyond ride-hailing. Since joining the company in early 2023, Alexander has been responsible for strategy, partner network, and finance workstreams within inDrive.Money, inDrive’s financial services vertical. Alexander’s background includes extensive finance and strategy work, including for industrial enterprises, consulting companies, as well as technology startups in the field of AI and mobility. Alexander graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and has an MA in international Political Economy from Warwick University (UK).

Alexander, can you share your journey and what brought you to your current role as the Head of Business & Growth at inDrive Money?
I have always dreamed of expanding people’s access to financial products, believing that technology can help significantly disrupt this quite traditional sphere. This passion is reflected throughout my career in finance and tech, including founding my own AI startup and setting up a fintech arm at Avito, Russia’s largest classifieds platform. My current role at inDrive, the world’s second-most downloaded ridehailing app, reflects the next step in this exciting journey, enabling me to foster global adoption of financial technologies. As inDrive operates mostly in emerging markets, its financial services vertical inDrive.Money provides a perfect platform for us to drive financial inclusion. I am proud to be part of the team at inDrive. Money, which is doing important work to unlock formal lending for gig workers, who are often underserved by or even excluded from traditional banking in emerging markets.

How has the global mobility landscape evolved since inDrive’s inception, and what are the key factors that have contributed to its growth?
When inDrive started out in 2012 as a message board connecting drivers and passengers in Siberia, the ride hailing space was just beginning to take shape. Fast forward more than a decade to today, and we see ridehailing has become an integral part of everyday life, driven by the proliferation of smartphones and consumers’ search for greater convenience. The ridehailing sector provides crucial mobility options and flexible economic opportunities, especially needed in underserved communities in emerging markets. inDrive, which currently operates across 48 countries, remains focused on these communities. While prices for many of our competitors are determined by faceless algorithms, we are sticking with our popular peer-to-peer price bidding model, which enables inDrive to provide lower prices for passengers, higher compensation for drivers and greater agency and freedom of choice for everyone involved.

inDrive’s unique approach to pricing has made a significant impact. How do you ensure the business maintains a balance between fair pricing and long-term sustainability?
inDrive operates a lean model relative to many of our peers in the ride-hailing space. We forgo relying on costly subsidies, and instead let our price-bidding model do the marketing for us by providing fair pricing on which both the passengers and the drivers can agree. We are also expanding our offering beyond ridehailing, focusing on those sectors where we believe we can provide a better, more fair solution. inDrive is transforming into a multi-services app, which offers city-to-city transportation, delivery services and even financial services in some of our locations. This strategy enables inDrive to increase efficiency and maintain revenue growth.

The launch of New Ventures in 2023 marks a significant milestone for inDrive. What are the strategic objectives behind this new arm, and how do you see it shaping the company’s future?
New Ventures is inDrive’s corporate venture arm launched in the second half of 2023 to seek out promising like-minded startups predominantly operating in emerging markets in sectors that are complementary to mobility. These so-called underdogs can be ready to scale internationally, but lack easy access to capital and know-how compared with startups from the U.S. That’s where inDrive comes in with investment and know-how.

New Ventures is investing gradually via allocations of investment capital from inDrive’s balance sheet. Under the guidance of Andries Smit, serial entrepreneur and SVP of the New Verticals division that includes New Ventures, the in-house venture capital arm has made three investments so far. They include MIC Global, a prominent provider of embedded micro insurance solutions. This was part of a strategic partnership with MIC in June, 2024. In December 2024, New Ventures also invested in KraveMart, a leading online grocery delivery service in Pakistan, and Ryadom, a grocery and meal delivery service, in Kazakhstan.

inDrive operates in a large number of cities worldwide. What are some of the most important challenges you face when scaling operations across different countries and cultures?
Scaling inDrive.Money requires a lot of research and a deep understanding of local realities. For example, any new country where we launch has a unique regulatory environment, KYC requirements, financial products maturity, and different levels of financial literacy among the general population. To help with some of these issues, we partner with local financial institutions. For example, launching inDrive.Money in Indonesia meant taking into account the specifics of Sharia Law, where charging interest is forbidden. Therefore, before we enter a new market, we conduct thorough research of the legal, business and cultural landscape, as well as any other important aspects of each location. This research can take up to 4 months before we are finally ready to green light the launch.

Could you elaborate on how inDrive’s mission of challenging social injustice is embedded in the company’s daily operations and long-term goals?
Challenging injustice remains inDrive’s core value, helping shape business strategy, foster loyalty, and inspire our team.
inDrive was originally created to address unfair, cartel-like pricing by taxi companies in Yakutsk, one of the world’s coldest inhabited cities. By giving the power back to individuals through its peer-to-peer price negotiation model, inDrive created a fairer, more transparent alternative to traditional ride-hailing.

This mission to challenge injustice and the wider goal of improving the lives of 1 billion people by 2030 continues to shape inDrive’s work today across all of the company’s 48 markets of operation.

As Head of Business & Growth, how do you evaluate the market demand and trends to ensure that inDrive.Money continues to innovate and expand successfully?
At inDrive.Money, where I’m Head of Business and Growth, we employ two main techniques to evaluate demand and test the waters in every new market we launch. Firstly, we conduct “top down” research, whereby we meet with potential local fintech partners to get their unique outlook on the market and local specifics, including customer priorities and key trends. Secondly, we employ the “bottom up” approach by conducting interviews with our drivers to ask them directly about their financial habits and needs: how they earn and save money, their payment preferences (i.e. cash, card, QR codes etc.), do they have any outstanding loans and if so, what are the repayment conditions. This top down and bottom up approach, applied in tandem, gives us a good understanding of potential demand in a new market, so we can tailor our product accordingly before we launch.

The integration of inVision’s (now known as inDrive’s impact wing) community empowerment programs has become a key part of inDrive’s corporate responsibility. How do you measure the impact of these initiatives?
I truly believe that companies like inDrive can effect positive change, offering support in areas where access to opportunities may be lacking. inDrive supports impact initiatives in 17 countries, aiming to improve the quality of life for individuals. Our programs create better outcomes for individuals and more favorable conditions for doing business. We can see firsthand the positive changes they are bringing to those that need help, as well as to the global tech community at large.

In addition to providing economic opportunities for drivers and other service providers, inDrive is working to empower local communities, including with the Supernovas football initiative and the YourPace Running program. The Supernovas initiative provides a safe and positive environment for children in small towns and remote areas. We hire and onboard football coaches to provide the children with free training. Participation in sports supports physical and cognitive development, creating positive change for the entire community. This year we are expanding our program to countries in Africa, including Ghana, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco, as well as to Latin America’s Colombia, Mexico and Chile.

These programs, aimed at underprivileged communities in rural areas, have a ripple effect of improving overall community resilience and development. Research suggests that sports can provide a sense of social inclusion and increase the perception of safety. Sports clubs which welcome vulnerable youths can help foster social networks, improve academic skills and development, and change their life trajectory.

We also launched the Aurora Tech Award in 2021 to help level the playing field for women founders of tech companies, since they continue to receive just a tiny sliver of global venture funding compared to male peers. We have just awarded the Aurora Tech Awards for 2025 to some outstanding tech founders at a ceremony in Cairo, Egypt at the end of April. We are proud to support winners from Nigeria, Chile, and India and their tech-enabled startups.

Another example of a more local impact initiative inDrive supports is “Ride to Donate” in Morocco, which we ran in partnership with the High Atlas Foundation. This program helped plant more than 50,000 fruit and nut trees, supporting the environment, as well as local farm owners and their families. Each tree generates over 18 million Moroccan Dirhams per year, so planting fruit and walnut trees helps increase farming families’ income and financial wellbeing.

We believe in the power of business to achieve transformative change for people, so inDrive is strongly committed to its core mission of improving the lives of 1 billion people by 2030.

With the rapid development of technology, how does inDrive stay ahead of potential competitors in terms of innovation and service offerings?
We listen to our customers’ needs and develop solutions based on feedback from them, rather than watching what our competitors are doing. We remain innovative by remaining attentive.

The past few years have been transformative for inDrive as the company rolled out its new tech stack called Ayan. This project has been in development since late 2022, with a dedicated team of over 350 engineers.

Ayan signifies a shift to microservices architecture, enabling inDrive to build a more scalable platform, simplifying the integration of new features and setting a solid foundation for continuous improvements. Ayan provides enhanced reliability and resilience of our tech stack by isolating potential issues to specific regions. This new architecture not only reduces cost and boosts efficiency, but it also makes inDrive a more stable and reliable platform, paving the way for exciting future advancements.

Looking toward the future, what’s next for inDrive.Money? Are there any exciting projects or new ventures in the pipeline that you can share with us?
We are considering expanding inDrive.Money to new markets Latam, EMEA, and APAC. Our main goal is to maximize the number of inDrive drivers who can access financial products through our app. While serving an important role for the financial inclusion of drivers who work flexibly, inDrive.Money has also been proven to positively impact the inDrive ecosystem overall, including by boosting driver loyalty and productivity. In addition to growing our geographic footprint, we continue looking for additional opportunities to offer new financial services to our users. I am really excited for what’s to come!

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