Founders in Arms
00:04:35 · Immad Akhund, Jack Zhang
[00:04:35] S1: What was your motivation to have like so many so many other businesses on the side? [00:04:40] S0: I accidentally started a small business, like, essentially a magazine called Urban Exploration when I was 14. And so kind of a student magazine that just all of a sudden went viral that we got, like, a few thousand merchants in a very short period of time because, you know, we we were from the best schools back then, and we write very interesting content. And this is like, you know, late nineties, you know, in China. And, you know, and when I moved to Australia when I was 15, and we we shut down that business. But the taste of that, you know, the the achievement, the happiness that you you kind of experience from that first builder journey, it's it's really, really interesting and fascinating. That's part of the happiest period I have in my life growing up. And just, you know, just kinda got a buck about building stuff and and just been... Keep trying different things to see what what makes me happy and what make me feel passionate about. Unfortunately, none of those small business I started, like, really excites me until the founding of AirWallax. [00:05:42] S1: Nice. So you're always looking for, like, something you could go all in on. Like, that was kinda, like, why you were exploring all these businesses?
00:05:42 · Immad Akhund, Jack Zhang
[00:05:42] S1: Nice. So you're always looking for, like, something you could go all in on. Like, that was kinda, like, why you were exploring all these businesses? [00:05:49] S0: I mean, I didn't really understand what does OEM mean at that time. I just wanna find something that I can... Like, leveraging my technical skills, but also my kind of commercial skills to to scale, to something that... To to kind of scale to something that can creating massive amount of impact. Right? Because I went to college while watching, you know, Facebook took took off, then Google become a massive platform. You know, I went to college in, you know, 2004, and that's kind of a a rapid sort of development period of of the Internet and also a lot of the stuff moving from, you know, web to to mobile. And later on, sort of that had the cloud shift. And then you're just sort of growing up watching these massive changes. And, you know, I had my first computer when I was in junior high school and start... Started with playing games. Right? But then when you're growing up, like, just sort of seeing the the rise of the Internet, the cloud, the mobile, and you're just fascinated by all this technology shift, and then you wanted to... As a sort of a computer science and finance student, you wanted to do something about it.
00:05:49 · Jack Zhang, Rajat Suri
[00:05:49] S0: I mean, I didn't really understand what does OEM mean at that time. I just wanna find something that I can... Like, leveraging my technical skills, but also my kind of commercial skills to to scale, to something that... To to kind of scale to something that can creating massive amount of impact. Right? Because I went to college while watching, you know, Facebook took took off, then Google become a massive platform. You know, I went to college in, you know, 2004, and that's kind of a a rapid sort of development period of of the Internet and also a lot of the stuff moving from, you know, web to to mobile. And later on, sort of that had the cloud shift. And then you're just sort of growing up watching these massive changes. And, you know, I had my first computer when I was in junior high school and start... Started with playing games. Right? But then when you're growing up, like, just sort of seeing the the rise of the Internet, the cloud, the mobile, and you're just fascinated by all this technology shift, and then you wanted to... As a sort of a computer science and finance student, you wanted to do something about it. [00:06:55] S2: I know you you guys are both a fintech. I'm new to this space. So, Jack, maybe for the audience, also for me, like, just help us understand, like, you know, what is the scale of Airwallex today? And, like, you know, what kind of, you know, yeah, what kind of impact are you having today after ten years of building this?
00:06:55 · Rajat Suri, Jack Zhang
[00:06:55] S2: I know you you guys are both a fintech. I'm new to this space. So, Jack, maybe for the audience, also for me, like, just help us understand, like, you know, what is the scale of Airwallex today? And, like, you know, what kind of, you know, yeah, what kind of impact are you having today after ten years of building this? [00:07:12] S0: So now we scale the business to about over 2,000 employees globally that we're processing close to 300,000,000,000 sort of dollars in in transaction, operating in over a 120 countries around the world. And we also built, like, a fully vertical integrated system that, you know, with financial infrastructure and software and now AI, essentially like a vertical integrated financial operating system that to give global... You know, allow global company to operating everywhere in the world. And we now have close to like $1,200,000,000 in ARR, and the business is still growing 90% year on year. [00:07:57] S2: Okay. Great. That's incredible. Congrats on what you built. And do you go from here? Is this... Are you... Have you kind of realized your vision from ten years ago or there's still a long way to go?
00:07:57 · Rajat Suri, Jack Zhang
[00:07:57] S2: Okay. Great. That's incredible. Congrats on what you built. And do you go from here? Is this... Are you... Have you kind of realized your vision from ten years ago or there's still a long way to go? [00:08:11] S0: We still have like one... Less than 1% addressable market in the global banking payments sector. Right? So we are pretty well known in Australia and, you know, APAC. We're kind of a dominant fintech player there, but we're still, you know, reasonably, like, know, you know, the new in in Europe and in United States. And we made a very big effort in expanding to Europe and The US, you know, from the last four, five years. And the revenue in The US and Europe now close to 40% of the company's revenue already. But, you know, there's still a long way to go. Right? I mean, if you're looking at, like, less than 1% of the the the addressable market and, you know, there's plenty of headroom ahead of us, and we're also competing with the lack of Citi or HSBC. Right? We wanna become the new generation of of a global bank that a technology driven... Essentially, like a technology company that was banking licensed around the world. And there's massive opportunity ahead of us. [00:09:15] S2: And and how do you guys work together or, you know, like, you know, how are you guys gonna... You guys are both in this space.
00:09:15 · Rajat Suri, Jack Zhang
[00:09:15] S2: And and how do you guys work together or, you know, like, you know, how are you guys gonna... You guys are both in this space. [00:09:22] S0: I think if you think about, like... I mean, I'll let Yimad talk about Mercury. I mean, my opinion is, like, you have a lot of domestic banks and you have a lot of global banks. Right? So, you know, I think about, like, just, you know, Wells Fargo versus Citi or HSBC. I mean, that's kind of how I think about it. And those banks are working together as well. Right? So that we're looking at to help Mercury to do international payments for for their customers. And that's kind of basically the relationship between, like, you know, a a domestic bank versus a global bank. I mean, that's how I think about it. I mean, Manu, you help, you know, I don't wanna speak on your behalf. You you you can correct me if I'm wrong.