Episode 33 - Ashish Aggarwal
In this episode, I sit down with Ashish Aggarwal, partner at PayPal Ventures.
Guests
Show notes
In this episode, I sit down with Ashish Aggarwal, partner at PayPal Ventures.
Ashish started his career in IBM in India, but quickly moved to banking, specifically to Citi first, and then moving to London working at Deutsche Bank, with a focus on investment banking and of course fintech.
He joined PayPal Ventures in 2017 in the corporate finance team at first, moving then to the corporate venture of the US payment giant, investing globally with focus on AI, B2B SaaS, and fintech, at the Series A and B stages. Over time, he took care of multiple deals in fintech, from Paymob (MENA) to Tink (UK/Europe), from Aspire (Singapore) to Pliant (EU), but also Tabby (UAE/KSA), Raisin (Europe). He currently sits as an observer on the board of Paymob, Stitch, PPRO, Codat, Pliant, Tabby, Mintoak, Single Interface.
With him, we talked about the journey from bankers to VC, the multiple deals he backed over time, his take on the fintech market today and the main trends he is expecting to see shaping the market in the upcoming future.
In this episode
Ashish Aggarwal, who leads PayPal Ventures in London, explains how he moved from payments M&A at Deutsche Bank to corporate venture capital and what makes a corporate VC work: clear intent and financial discipline. He discusses exits and London's role as a capital market, the founder traits he looks for, how Europe's e-money rules enabled its neobanks, and why stablecoins will matter most in B2B and treasury use cases.
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and PayPal Ventures
- 4:46From corporate M&A to venture
- 8:36How corporate venture capital works
- 12:02Exits and IPOs in Europe
- 16:46What PayPal Ventures looks for in founders
- 21:35European regulation: brake or opportunity?
- 24:01Stablecoins, B2B and tokenisation
- 31:39Finding alpha and valuation discipline
- 38:15Advice for founders and aspiring VCs
Key facts
Ashish studied at IIT and IIM in India and was hired by Deutsche Bank in 2012 to work on payments M&A in Europe; he has been in London for ten years.
Ashish joined PayPal in 2016 after contacting its head of M&A and ventures on LinkedIn.
PayPal Ventures is in its ninth year, has 80–85 portfolio companies, reviews more than 2,000 startups a year and invests in 10–12 new ones.
Ashish leads PayPal Ventures' London office, covering EMEA and APAC, alongside New York and San Francisco under one investment committee.
PayPal Ventures usually writes $5–10 million at Series A or B into companies with $2–3 million in revenue and triple-digit growth.
A corporate VC needs clear intent and transparency with founders, and as a listed company PayPal has a duty to earn financial returns.
In Europe the likely exits are strategic sales or private equity unless companies list in the US, while IPO markets are active in India, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Great fintech founders need resilience, product velocity and the ability to turn licences and compliance into a moat.
Without rich US interchange fees, fintechs in Europe and Asia cannot survive on a single product.
Europe's e-money framework, created over a decade ago, enabled Monzo, Revolut and digital wallets before the rest of the world.
80–85% of cross-border payments still run on slow, costly bank rails despite Wise, Remitly and Xoom; stablecoins address that friction.
Stablecoins' most durable use case is moving cash between a multinational's subsidiaries.
Founders should run reverse reference checks by speaking to a VC's portfolio founders.
Questions and answers
What compounds over a VC career?
Trust and relationships more than capital, especially when covering many markets from London.
Where does alpha come from?
Misunderstood companies outside the usual hubs, such as Cologne or Cape Town, found through global thematic theses.
How do you break into VC?
Act like an investor already: develop a thesis, analyse markets and build relationships.