By Sam Kothari (pictured), Head of Progress ANZ, Airwallex
The way in which companies function has been without end modified; it’s now utterly borderless. The digital economic system, alongside speedy tech adoption and the rise of hybrid working, have helped to scale back the barrier for entry overseas.
Many companies are setting their sights on international operations, with the flexibility to achieve new prospects, expertise and income streams. Nevertheless, growth globally also can create complicated challenges for companies – significantly in the case of monetary operations.
Enter Airwallex.
We assist companies by assuaging the worldwide roadblocks related to worldwide markets, together with opening accounts abroad, excessive FX charges and managing worker bills. Our fee community extends to over 150 nations throughout all seven continents, making us one of many widest reaching fee networks on the planet.
So, how did we go from startup, to one in every of Australia’s most profitable expertise firms?
Discovering product-market match
Airwallex’s merchandise and platform had been impressed by real-life experiences. Two of our founders, Jack Zhang and Max Li, understood the ache factors dealing with small companies, after being charged excessive FX charges when importing provides for his or her cafe in Melbourne.
So, they teamed up with associates from the College of Melbourne, Lucy Liu and Xijing Dai, and used their collective backgrounds in expertise and finance to develop a brand new answer, geared toward assembly the enterprise challenges they themselves had been dealing with.
A deep understanding of Airwallex’s goal buyer supplied a stable basis for locating product-market match (how the product will fulfil a buyer’s wants, challenges or needs). From right here, the founders continued evolving the product with in depth consumer analysis, together with suggestions from current and potential prospects.
With a customer-first mindset, Airwallex has created a very international funds and banking infrastructure geared toward empowering companies of all sizes to simply accept funds, transfer cash globally, and simplify their monetary operations.
Placing the shopper first
The shopper first ethos – which helped create Airwallex – stays on the coronary heart of every part we do. Right this moment, we’ve suggestions loops inside Airwallex to champion our prospects internally with product and engineering groups – this is called the “Voice of Buyer”.
We additionally launched the “Precedence Entry Program” which permits prospects to entry new services and products within the beta part, once more creating a better connection between prospects and product groups.
Extra just lately, my very own group launched the shopper “delight fund”; designed to empower our buyer assist groups with a funds to spend on something they assume might convey pleasure to a buyer’s day.
Assembly progress challenges head on
Whereas Airwallex is now one in every of Australia’s most profitable expertise firms, a couple of brief years in the past we had been nonetheless working to create a foothold within the Australian market. The group was small, mighty, and in typical startup style, was juggling a number of hats and a number of tasks.
This prolonged to each function, together with for myself. When you’d referred to as Airwallex’s buyer assist, I’d have been on the opposite finish greeting you with: “Thanks for calling Airwallex, cross-border funds.”
Though the group in Australia has since grown, recruiting the precise expertise to scale quickly is a continuing focus for us. For instance, scaling Airwallex’s international gross sales and operations group from two to over 40 individuals, means persevering with to create new capabilities, roles and methods of working.
Whereas there isn’t a playbook to comply with when scaling, Airwallex is fortunate sufficient to have a rare group of worldwide expertise; individuals who after they put their heads collectively, can put all of the puzzle items in place – regardless of the problem, the stakes or the hurdles to beat.
We’re so grateful and honoured to be named ‘Finest Fintech Progress Story’ on the seventh Annual FinTech Awards. If I might attribute our success to 1 factor specifically, it will be our international group’s continued dedication to offering a greater expertise for our prospects; connecting entrepreneurs, enterprise builders, makers and creators with alternatives in each nook of the world.
