Pranav Sood, GM of EMEA at Airwallex, says the company's growth is unusual because most businesses expand west to east while few go east to west.
Airwallex reports annual recurring revenue of around $200m and top-line growth of nearly 180% year over year in its last quarter, which Sood attributes mainly to product quality and customer pain.
Sood says infrastructure must be built to a blueprint beyond immediate demand, and that customer demand is the strongest signal for choosing new markets like Israel and Germany.
Airwallex builds global payments infrastructure ahead of demand to win beyond its home markets
Airwallex is a fast-growing payments platform that treats global expansion as an infrastructure project, not a series of market tests. It builds licenses and systems to a blueprint ahead of demand because its goal is to win globally, not only in its home region. The cost is operational strain. With no headquarters and rapid hiring, the company is still working out how to run a distributed team.
Takeaways
Airwallex competes on full-stack scale, and growth is rapid. Sood says Airwallex offers payments, FX, payouts, issuing and expense management on its own infrastructure, with payouts in over 150 places and 45 currencies. He cites about $200M ARR and nearly 180% year-over-year growth last quarter, credited to product quality.
Global infrastructure must be built ahead of demand. Sood says Airwallex builds to a blueprint beyond immediate demand, which he links to being born when capital was cheap and investors patient. It holds about 60 licenses, since becoming a global winner needs a large business outside its birth markets.
Market choice rests on three criteria and customer pull. Sood screens markets on demographics and addressable market, product fit and the minimum viable entity. Customer demand is the strongest signal. Israel excites him for 2023 onward, while Germany is Europe's obvious big prize yet one of the hardest to enter.
A distributed company with no headquarters is unsolved. Airwallex runs without a single headquarters and Sood admits it has not nailed this. Regional GMs sit on the executive team under a decentralized model, collaborating but staying autonomous. Distribution widens the hiring pool, though local strategies like Hong Kong's may not travel to EMEA.
Scaling requires structured onboarding and consistent processes. EMEA has about 120 people, with 30 to 35 on the London commercial team. Airwallex hired a sales enablement lead, is building a structured onboarding program and plans to systematize processes over the next couple of years. Pay plans for the same role should match across countries.
Marketing is early and starts with positioning. Sood, interim global head of marketing, draws on GoCardless, which switched off paid marketing entirely, but says Airwallex is early in its journey. His work centers on positioning, including rewriting the corporate site with the CEO, and on building a distributed team with new growth hires in London.
Managers and teams need an explicit mutual contract. Sood argues that beyond the employment contract, managers and team members should spell out what each expects of the other. He says he was not open enough about this early in his career and did worse for it.
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