The AI sales agent that is helping Indonesians get mortgages, with Ilya Kravtsov (Pillar Lab)
How to Lend Money to Strangers
Brendan le Grange
4.9 • 43 Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pillar is a vertical AI platform built for financial institutions, deploying product-aware AI sales agents that qualify leads, recommend the right financial products, and drive applications at scale - helping banks, lenders, and fintechs get more Indonesians into homes.
We recorded this episode just as they were about to rebrand, so while we spoke about Ringkas, you'll now find everything you need to know over at https://pillarlab.ai/
Ilya is on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilya-kravtsov-/
As is Pillar at https://www.linkedin.com/company/pillarlab/
I'm on LinkedIn, too, at https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanlegrange/
And if you want to get a sneak peek at some of what I'm working on, my website is currently being refreshed (even as some of the projects it mentions lag behind): https://www.brendanlegrange.com/
Other friends of the show include:
https://www.ogmara.com/ (customised risk management and analytic consulting)
https://www.ontap.co.za/pages/hoedspruit-store-details (for all your Hoedspruit-based bathroom needs)
https://flatwhiteorfoff.com/ (ask for anything other than a flat white, the answer is in the name)
https://www.joinhumoni.com/ (helping international students find accommodation, work, and financial services on day one)
https://www.haboomoney.com/ (making collections personalised, flexible and intelligent)
https://beetlesense.ai (AI-powered day one pest detection for forestry)
And since you like podcasts, I also co-create HAIghtened Senses with Christo van Zyl, which looks at the intersection between human senses and technology (and this week, flying cars)
Keep well, Brendan
This is an interview I set up while at Money20/20 Asia, but they have shows around the world. If you want to make similar connections, you can get tickets at https://www.money2020.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We live in the world where, you know, you can have very easy access to information. |
| 0:04.9 | And it's very important to, you know, force yourself to learn because this revolution is something we cannot just forget about and it's not going to go away. |
| 0:13.1 | Right. It's here to stay and it's here to really change our lives. |
| 0:16.6 | Right. And I think the best thing we should do is really spend, you know, an hour a day trying to research, trying to try different tools and share as much as possible to others so that we can learn from each other. |
| 0:27.8 | Because nobody really is an expert of anything because even if you think you are in three months, you become really obsolete if you don't learn every day. |
| 0:41.0 | Food. three months, you become really obsolete if you don't burn every day. For the first two years that I worked with Henry Kim, I don't think I ever met him in person. |
| 0:47.0 | He was essentially living in Jakarta, having meetings, signing bits of paper, having different |
| 0:52.6 | meetings, signing different bits of paper, |
| 0:54.6 | putting together a deal to buy a share in one of the credit bureaus that were opening up in |
| 1:00.1 | the near future. And then the company we worked for had a change of management at the top level, |
| 1:05.5 | and all of a sudden Indonesia was no longer on. Henry saw two years of work evaporate before his eyes. And I found |
| 1:13.0 | myself a new team member because with all his free time, they bundled him and me together |
| 1:18.8 | and gave us the job of reviving a long stuttering project in Thailand to get the first |
| 1:26.1 | national level credit bureau score up and running. |
| 1:29.2 | Now, that's one of the projects that really defines my time in Asia. So I'm very grateful for |
| 1:34.7 | the hiccup, but still quite regretful too that I never got to go to Indonesia. I never saw |
| 1:40.2 | Jakarta, one of the most dynamic cities in the region. And that's something I hope to start |
| 1:46.2 | putting right in a little way and academically here in this interview today. It's something I want |
| 1:53.5 | to put right more physically in the future, but I still need to get a couple of plans in order to |
| 1:58.1 | make that happen. But we'll talk about that in a future episode when the time is right. |
| 2:03.0 | For now, let's look at AI-powered infrastructure for mortgages, how that makes home buying |
| 2:08.9 | easier for Indonesians and Saudis and people in the Gulf and Asian region and people |
... |
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