When New Zealand companies expand offshore, the path is usually familiar – and it doesn’t start with the UAE, Turkey and India.
Taking this unlikely route is one of the ways New Zealand‑founded real estate fintech Valocity has ignored convention on its way to becoming a global success.
India, in particular, proved to be a pivotal move, explained founder and global CEO Carmen Vicelich in episode 71 of Bridge talks Business.
“We could have gone to America, we could have gone to Canada, but we loved India because of Narendra Modi’s ‘housing for all’ programme,” Vicelich told host Ryan Bridge.
At its core, Valocity uses data and digital infrastructure to modernise how banks assess property value before lending – a challenge common across mortgage markets, but at far greater scale in markets where processes were still largely manual.
India has at least 300 million households, with recent estimates putting the current total at around 335 million.
“It was really, really impactful for us to go to India. And it was super hard,” said Vicelich.
“We were literally pioneering a new way of working. If you don’t have a credit score and you’re getting your first ever home, you really need a robust and valid decision on that property – and that risk – for the bank.
“People were working completely manually in India. They’d pick up the documents, do the valuation, then bring the documents back and key them in. It would take weeks.
“We had to make it easy for the valuers, so we created an app for them for free. Then there was also the adoption challenge for banks – moving the entire process from manual to digital. By digitising that process and building secure, reliable infrastructure, we were able to automate it. And that was transformational.”
That impact has not gone unnoticed. In 2025, Valocity was named International Fintech of the Year in India, selected from more than 2700 companies worldwide. It marked the first time a New Zealand company had won the award.
For Vicelich, the company’s success is not an endpoint. As Valocity continues to scale internationally, she has launched climate‑focused platform Generate Zero. Valocity itself came after she had already founded Data Insight more than a decade ago – a venture that only got off the ground after a gruelling legal battle that drained significant personal savings.
Asked what advice she would offer other Kiwi entrepreneurs, Vicelich pointed to sacrifice as much as ambition.
“Don’t wait for everything to be perfect before you start, because there’s never a perfect time,” she said.
“Entrepreneurship is about risk and sacrifice. And if you’re going to make those sacrifices – then think big. Think global domination. We always knew we were building world‑class businesses. We knew we were going to be the best in the world – from New Zealand.”
Catch the full conversation between Ryan Bridge and Carmen Vicelich in Bridge talks Business episode 71.
