Welcome to Money 2020 Middle East.
We're here at the Riyadh exhibition and Convention Center, and we're delighted to be sitting down with Walid Hassuna, BDO of Value.
Hello, hi, how are you?
So you know, just looking around the convention center, there's so much buzz around the fintech landscape.
Tell us about the state of Fintech innovation here and your company's role in the growth.
I think FinTech is one of the most important and exciting topics not only in the region but worldwide.
The region also has been growing at a very fast pace for the past few years.
When we started in 2016 and 2017, most of FinTech was actually in payments, so companies in payments were what we call FinTech, and that included, by the way, Visa, Mastercard, and other players.
But to be really honest, once we introduced a new vertical in Egypt for lending, and lending to consumers, trying to mimic the buy now pay later trend at this time.
Everywhere in the world, this was a major change to FinTech because with lending, it becomes a different ball game completely.
Everyone is interested to look at how can you lend people, how can you use technology, how can you underwrite customers?
Is there going to be a role for AI or not?
And everything was like moving very fast after that.
So we've seen another buy now operators coming out from Saudi, coming.
Town from UAE, from Jordan, everywhere, and then we started to see other companies coming in for rectech because like the regulators all has panicked from this new products and they wanted to regulate it.
So we sort of rectek, we've seen insuretech coming out, cybersecurity, everything.
So I think it started with payments and now there are like Multiple and multiple verticals of fins we can see right now.
Right, building on that, you have so many companies coming into this space.
The competition is fierce.
How do you stay ahead of both regional and global competition?
For us, I think the reason we've been able to be the market leader in Egypt despite we are competing with 49 companies in our space.
Uh, is innovation, so it's very important to have new products, and those products need to speak to the customers.
So if you listen to the customers right, you're able to build new products.
Second thing is we've always built the company on speed over accuracy.
So we want to do very fast, very.
Uh, very fast products to the market, and if it's not nice, it didn't work, we can roll it back.
But we want always speed over accuracy because we want it to be ahead of the curve when it comes to product depth and product width.
Uh, this is one thing.
Second thing is, we are, with the exception of me, the average age in the company is in the 20.
Including leadership, so we are able to speak the right language for our customer segments and we are able to use technology in the right way.
Also, most of the people working with the product are bankers, so they understand banking, they understand finance and done everything.
Most of the companies that we have seen in the region and in Egypt.
When they do fintech, they are either very thin or Veritech.
But the problem is, if you don't that that you're missing one part of that, because this company actually was built as a corporate innovation from Southern investment banking team, so banking and tech were equal in this equation, and that's why why we stay ahead.
We have a good banking team and a good tech team.
So I want to go back to the beginning where we. about more and more companies entering this space.
Let's talk about potential exits for these companies.
I think we had one, I have one right now, so our our our option was a little bit unorthodox, so we went into a direct listing into the Egyptian stock exchange.
And I think this is going to be uh something everyone's going to consider in the future.
Um, listing in a stock exchange is extremely important, even if you're gonna end up being acquired.
Because it, it puts the, it puts the, it puts you in the spotlight.
Now not only private equities and strategic investors are looking at you, but also asset managers.
Sorry, and those asset managers actually they have a big focus.
Uh on similar companies in other countries, so they are able to uh position you in the right place.
I think since we've been listed, we have now 30,000.
Investors or shareholder in our company, we only listed 20% of the company, by the way, and we have 30,000 shareholders.
We are one of the very active retail stocks in Egypt and we have been receiving calls from every part of the world.
Everyone wants to understand what we're doing, and I think exits through through listing or IPO something that everyone should consider.
So what other advice would you have as we see so many founders building these businesses?
I think the most important thing for those founders, and it should be something that everyone should work on, to be honest, that that you, you don't have to wait until a certain exit happens.
It's better that you look at your options early on.
You have to consider also mergers and acquisitions.
These are extremely important things that you need to work on.
Uh, you should not shy away from being acquired by, especially FinTech by a bank or a payment company or anything.
We are building those businesses, but they're not our children, so we have to take care of that.
We have to take care of our investors, people who have put money with us, people who work in those companies.
We have to make sure that we have a better understanding of something that works for everyone, not only for the founders.
So keep your options open.
Yes, you have to keep your optional I listen very well.
Thank you so much.
This was great.
Thank you very much.
I really enjoyed it.
Thank you.
