Founders Everywhere: Vidhyasahar Thiyagarajan
Vidhyasahar Thiyagarajan is the co-founder & CEO of Fusepay, the Financial OS for frontier islands, starting with Seychelles, Mauritius & Maldives.
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Fusepay is an all-in-one payments and finance platform that is making waves for frontier islands, starting with Seychelles, Mauritius, and Maldives. It tackles the challenges of outdated, cash-heavy, and manual processes that drain local businesses of time, money, and security. Fusepay streamlines transactions, cuts costs, and helps prevent fraud, all while fitting seamlessly into the way local businesses already operate. By digitizing the most painful parts of everyday finance and making transactions easier and cheaper, Fusepay aims to become the default way money moves across underserved islands.
Co-founders Vidhyasahar Thiyagarajan (CEO) and Francesco Rocchi (CTO), have deep ties to Seychelles, where both of their families run businesses, and where Fusepay was founded. Having experienced the challenges of outdated payments and manual processes firsthand, they’re designing a solution from the inside. Before Fusepay, Vidhyasahar developed technology and digital payments for companies ranging from startups to billion-dollar enterprises across India, the Middle East, and Europe, while Francesco brings deep expertise in engineering and product design. Vidhyasahar shares more about Fusepay and how they are using their global experience to create a platform specifically tailored to the needs of local businesses.
What inspired the creation of Fusepay?
It really grew out of my own family’s experience in Seychelles. I moved from Bangalore to Seychelles in 2019, where my parents have run a retail business for over 35 years. I was shocked to see how outdated payments still were. My parents had to visit the bank almost every day, stand in queues to pay basic bills, and deal with expensive, opaque fees. For a country with relatively high per‑capita GDP, the financial infrastructure felt decades behind. When I met my co‑founder Francesco, (originally from Italy) and saw his family’s wholesale business facing the same issues, we realized there was a real opportunity to fix a problem we were living with every day.
What’s Fusepay’s North Star?
Our North Star is to become the default way to move money in island and frontier economies. That means businesses and individuals using Fusepay daily, across Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives, and eventually similar markets in the Caribbean and Pacific, without having to think twice about it. When Fusepay is the invisible, reliable layer everyone depends on for everyday payments, we’ll know we’ve built something truly valuable.
Why is Fusepay going to win?
We created Fusepay with local businesses, rather than copy‑pasting models from the US, Europe, or India. We designed around how people actually work today and productized just enough to cut 60–70% of the manual work and 50–60% of the cost without forcing companies to completely change their processes.
Tell us about some recent milestones that Fusepay crushed.
First, we made history on the regulatory front. Fusepay became the first FinTech in Seychelles to complete the full licensing process independently, without relying on a bank or telecom partnership. This took over a year of close collaboration with regulators, focused on education, transparency, and trust-building. Rather than slowing us down, that period sharpened our go-to-market strategy. We deepened key partnerships, including with the Seychelles Retail Association, representing 300–350 businesses, regularly demoed early prototypes, and built a strong commercial pipeline.
Second, we launched our private beta in late November and are already processing roughly $50,000 in transactions across 20+ businesses. That early traction showed the groundwork we laid during the licensing phase paid off and was worth the wait.
How has your background influenced you as a founder?
I come from a product design background, which makes me obsess over deeply understanding user behavior and pain before jumping to solutions. Growing up in India and moving to Seychelles as an adult also gave me a dual perspective on fast-paced tech ecosystems and under-served frontier markets, which strongly informs how we design and scale Fusepay.
Fun Fact:
I live on an island but don’t eat seafood. People find that funny.
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