Indonesia’s Alami wants to prove Islamic finance can be profitable

Dima Djani was serving as a vice president of French investment bank Societe Generale when he got the calling to pursue a career in finance based on sharia principles. He then decided to leave his high-paying job to build a sharia-compliant peer-to-peer lending startup called Alami with his partners Harza Sandityo and Bembi Juniar in 2018.

“My move was driven by personal and commercial reasons,” Djani told KrAsia in a recent interview. “As a Muslim, I find that building a fintech startup that complies with sharia law is fulfilling. Moreover, I see that although everybody talks about the big potential of Islamic finance in Indonesia, its penetration, especially in banking, is very low – less than 6%,” he said.