Former Grab CTO starts fintech company in Singapore

Wei Zhu, former CTO of Grab. Image credit: Robert Scoble.

Ever since Wei Zhu left his CTO position at Southeast Asia ride-hailing provider Grab after just one year, people have been waiting with bated breath to find out the former Facebook engineer’s next move.

Now we know. Wei is the co-founder of Prosecure, a fintech startup that creates products aimed at ecommerce companies. Its first product is supposed to help online merchants on ecommerce platforms save money on reverse logistics operations – for example, helping with costs related to shipping returned items.

We wanted an idea where we can have growth without burning a huge amount of cash.

Prosecure is written in the Go programming language, and was seeking a backend engineer in May. It was also hiring a data scientist. (Update, 6:30 pm: Added comments from Wei Zhu.)

Building a startup of his own was a longtime dream for Wei, one which he can now focus completely on, he tells Tech in Asia. He spent a few months going over possible ideas before settling on Prosecure. “We wanted an idea where we can have growth without burning a huge amount of cash,” he says. “And we were also looking for an industry that had yet to be disrupted.”

His previous experience in companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Grab, taught him a lot about seeing projects through. “Done is better than perfect,” he says. Execution, iteration, and the right combination of technical and business talent are paramount for a successful startup, he explains.

Prosecure is part of PayPal’s newly announced incubator that’s based in Singapore. Together with startups OnePay and InvoiceInterchange, it will receive coaching and mentorship, access to funding from VCs, angels, and the Singapore government, networking, and a dedicated working space at PayPal’s Singapore headquarters.

Wei left Grab in a huff, even suing the company for allegedly owing shares promised to him. The case is ongoing.

At Facebook, he led the development of Facebook Connect.