In this episode, I sit down with Anil Stocker, CEO and founder of Kriya.

Anil Stocker is a UK fintech entrepreneur and investor, best known as the CEO and co-founder of Kriya, formerly MarketFinance. He founded the company in 2011 to provide UK businesses with frictionless access to B2B payments, credit and embedded finance, and has since overseen the deployment of more than £4 billion in credit through invoice finance, business loans and PayLater solutions.

Under his leadership, Kriya raised over £50 million in equity and more than £500 million in debt from institutions including Barclays UK, Northzone, Mouro Capital, Deutsche Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo and the British Business Bank, before being acquired by Allica Bank in October 2025.

Before founding Kriya, Stocker worked in private equity at Lehman Brothers and later at Cogent Partners, focusing on alternative investments and post-crisis portfolio restructuring. He holds a first-class degree in Economics from the University of Cambridge, is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Finance alumnus, and is an active angel investor across fintech, SaaS and climate-focused startups.

With him, we will discuss the ups and downs of launching a fintech company, but also how tricky it is to sell it to a big player, what is coming after an exit, and the difference between being an investor and a founder.

Want to stay up to date with the market? Here my newsletter and my podcast:

Linkedin: https://tinyurl.com/fintech-weekly

Substack: https://michelemattei.substack.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@buildersinfintech

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6L6L7uj3IIYEHbBStLXi8M?si=fa10d8cefe2741aa

ApplePodcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/it/podcast/builders/id1767562838?l=en-GB