Innovate Finance
00:07:51 · Veronica Glab, Pranav Sood
[00:07:51] S0: So I see your adverts on the tube every day on my commute. So what products and services do you offer specifically? And going a little more beyond that, are there any new products that are in the pipeline? [00:08:01] S1: It's a great question. And the way to think about our our business is that we can solve two sets of problems for our customers. The first is for themselves and the way that they're managing their own money and their own financial operations. The second is for their customers. So to give you an example, on the first side, you could be an e commerce store or a a or a kind of fashion brand that's looking to expand globally. I'll give you a good example. Me and M, which is a high end theme... Kind of women's wear brand, which some of your listeners may have heard of. My my wife certainly has, which is just to to her benefit. [00:08:36] S0: Sorry. I know them too. No.
00:08:38 · Pranav Sood
[00:08:38] S1: So they expanded into The US. And before they started working with Airwallex, they were struggling with the complexity and the cost of having to deal with multiple currencies and basically settling funds in USD into an account that was forcing them to convert. We're saving them tons of money and tons of time by giving them access to a virtual account in The US that they can settle into directly and therefore save themselves that that cost. So on the on the one end of the spectrum, you've got businesses like that who are using our tools and our and our and our products to solve their own financial problems. On the other, you've got a whole bunch of businesses who are using our our products to build financial products for their customers. And that's where it gets really interesting because that's basically embedded finance. And it's saying, hey, look, you wanna use... You wanna offer a financial product or a service, but you don't wanna go through the pain and the hassle of getting the licenses, building the infrastructure, and worrying about basically becoming, you know, a fintech product. So how do you do that? Well, actually, you can partner with someone like Airwallex and work with us and and leverage our infrastructure and our work to do so. So a great example of that would be a business like Qantas, for example, in in Australia, who, you know, as everyone would know, is an airline. They're not a fintech, but they want to offer a financial product without having to to worry about the licensing and the regulation that comes with it.
00:09:58 · Veronica Glab
[00:09:58] S0: Alright. And going on a little bit to the business side. Airwallex started in Australia, had a very successful expansion westwards and has now made it to The UK. How's the business doing here in The UK and are there any plans for further international expansion?
00:10:15 · Pranav Sood
[00:10:15] S1: Yeah. It's it's actually... As you say, it's a really rare thing to be expanding westwards. I don't know that many businesses that have started in APAC and then come to Europe and The US. Usually the other way around that people tend to tend to go, tend to see. So that's actually a super interesting experience to be to be living through right right now. We have a great business in The UK already. We've been here for about eighteen months. I've got a team here in in London of about 70. They are already serving lots of customers. I gave you, you know, one example. I could also talk about people like Plum. Many of your listeners will know them as a as a fintech. There are many, many others that we've that we've been able to serve over the last year or so. As a result, the business has grown really quickly. We found a lot of confidence and we found a lot of, you know, predictability in the places that we can solve problems. And so we're excited about continuing to scale that. Now, of course, we're also looking at the EU. We already have an office in The Netherlands. We also have an office in Lithuania and Vilnius. And, you know, as we look into 2023, we will be expanding selectively into the European Union. We're really excited about Benelux. There's a lot... We have a lot of customers, a lot of traction there already. We also think there are interesting opportunities in some of the other continental European markets that we're continuing to explore. The other one that we're very interested in is actually Israel. So we already serve a number of Israeli companies. So people like Papaya Global is one example. Some of your listeners may know them as a payroll software provider. We help them with their payouts and with their, you know, their need to help their customers move money around the world. And even... I was in Tel Aviv actually a couple of weeks ago with Jack. Even in the course of a couple of days, we met literally tens of CEOs and founders who were excited about the ability to actually simplify the movement of money globally. And I think Israel, as anyone who's been there will know really well, is a default global economy. They're always looking for opportunities to expand internationally. So that's definitely something that resonates with us. I was gonna say more broadly for Airwallex. Of course, you know, we're president in The US.
00:12:21 · Pranav Sood, Veronica Glab
We have a, you know, physical presence in San Francisco. We're working with a lot of very exciting customers already. Not too many that I can share the logos of just yet, but in three or four months, I think we'll be able to give you some quite exciting news. And then, of course, continuing to grow, you know, both looking at The Americas, but also into Asia as well where we already have a lot of geographical presence and and strength. [00:12:45] S0: Wow. You guys are really growing very quickly. And it's not just in terms of the geographic expansion as well, but I do know that you've raised a really successful series e. So kind of coming from your vantage point of such a successfully growing and scaling company, what are some of the advice or best practices that you would give to earlier stage startups who are looking to scale at the same level?
00:13:10 · Pranav Sood
[00:13:10] S1: I think it's a really interesting question, particularly given the environment that we're in now from a macroeconomic and a funding perspective. Absolutely. So if I look back at Airwallex's evolution and growth, one of the things that I think Jack and the founding team did brilliantly was have a really clear view of the blueprint that they were building towards from an infrastructure perspective. And we were and are very lucky to have very supportive investors who gave us the time and the space to build out that infrastructure from the get go and not to have to worry about trying to monetize everything on day one, you know, or even in the first couple of years. I don't know that that's a luxury that startups these days are gonna be given. I don't know if they're gonna be allowed to have three or four years where they just build out the infra before they start to actually monetize and and and and grow revenue. So I don't know if that lesson necessarily, you know, is one that can be repeated for for for people listening or for for aspiring founders. What I do think people can continue to do is two things. One is be incredibly clear about what your superpower actually is. And, you know, as you mentioned, we compete with a lot of people, but, actually, we don't necessarily believe that we have to win in every single base. We just know the bases where our product is differentiated, where we can serve, you know, ambitious global growing businesses. And I I would urge people who are founding businesses to be very clear about the same thing. What is your superpower? Who is your target customer? The other thing is more of an internal one, which is building a coherent company culture across borders is just so hard. And I don't know that there's a recipe or a formula that you can just apply. But what I can say is that what we've done, which I think works really well, is begin to define what the Airwallex global culture looks like and feels like, but also recognize that things are quite different in the different parts of the world where we have offices and and people. And so striking that balance between an identity, a culture that applies to the company as a whole, and recognizing what makes it special to work for a company in London or in Lithuania or in Australia.