Welcome back to another episode of Treasury's Unchained.
I'm here with Shuba Dasgupta, president and CEO of Pineapple Financial.
Shuba, thank you so much for stopping by with us.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having us.
Welcome, welcome.
Well, I'm so excited to hear about you guys.
Can we talk about a lot of interesting companies overall, but also Treasury strategies.
Talk to people, Bitcoin, Ethereum.
You guys are sort of focused on a different blockchain and token.
So tell us a little bit about that, why that decision was made.
And how that's going.
Absolutely.
So you know we've been watching obviously the different digital asset treasury strategies that were taking shape over the course of the last few months and saw a real opportunity for our business to get involved and not just from the Treasury perspective but also coinciding our business, you know, building digital mortgage solutions and having a possibility of building on chain mortgage solutions was really exciting for us.
So when we began exploring kind of which treasury strategy would best suit our business, we're very fortunate to come across the Injective Foundation and Injectives labs.
They built a finance first blockchain program which really mingles well with our business, and they have the INJ token.
So we chose to kind of really build our Treasury strategy around that INJ token and then build real world assets on their chain, hopefully coinciding and creating functional use cases for both.
Yeah, I thought that was interesting when I was reading up because there is the thing you're building on as a business is also the thing that's supporting your treasury strategy on the other side.
Tell me a little bit about the selection process.
Did you kind of have objective in mind and sort of pursued that angle, or is there you're looking at a bunch of different digital assets you could have gone with, and then there's a selection from there?
Yeah, I mean, as any good business when they're going to make a A decision.
You go through a process, right?
So you go through an investigation, we do some R&D, we kind of see what opportunities and what options are available to us.
I think we're very fortunate to come across the injective team.
I think the team in and of themselves are very like-minded to our organization, what we believe in innovation, driving forward future evolvement and evolution, and When we came across them, when we met, we just felt we were very like-minded and have an incredible opportunity to collaborate.
And let's talk a little bit how these digital assets are enhancing the pineapple fintech ecosystem without getting too technical, but what types of benefits does this unlock?
Is it faster settlement?
Is it product?
Innovation.
What is sort of the end user, and I know that could be a broker, it could be a consumer, but how does how does that change the experience for your end buyers?
Sure.
Well, there's kind of three pillars right when we look at it.
There's transparency, there's security, and there's speed, and we want to tackle all of them.
So as an example in a real world scenario today, through real estate transactions when Customers, clients are settling cash, you know, they're sending money into trust accounts for lawyers or law firms or title companies, and there's just been so much fraud and so much unnecessary embezzlement of a lot of that money.
Now when we look at security, we think about the potential to put this on chain and have transparency, have tracking mechanisms, and really provide a better customer experience, speed, efficacy for sure, smart contracts, settle.
And we're looking at all of it and kind of our first version one product is really focused around data and helping bring data on chains so that we can utilize that to make strategic decisions.
What's interesting about this strategic alignment of your treasury strategy is it seems like normally if a company has an advantage in technology, they might not want other companies to adopt it, but if other companies were to adopt Injective that supports the Treasury strategy, right?
So how do you how do you think about those two things?
Yeah, I think as we begin to pioneer this evolution and as we begin to pioneer various products, you know, Injective is almost like the WordPress of blockchain where you're able to kind of build out these templates similar to that you would a website and other competitors or peers can utilize them.
You know, if we have a revenue strategy where peers and competitors can benefit off of platforms and solutions that we've already built, then I think it's great for the overall business and great for the overall future.
Of our industry.
Got it.
So think about it as an infrastructure.
You could have two competitive competitive companies both using Microsoft.
Absolutely.
OK.
And let's go to the business overall outside of the Treasury strategy because obviously there's reasons people invest in companies like your own because there's a Treasury strategy in place, but also because they're interested in the business and real estate is a hot topic in retail investing right now.
So tell us a little bit about how the company makes money, who you.
Products to how can people understand you a little bit better?
Yeah, well, as the fastest growing mortgage company across North America, we've been really focused around building technology solutions to help create a better customer experience.
You know, it's a very archaic industry, manual processes, paper heavy, and we wanted to remove all of that and help digitize for the future.
So today a customer can come on board on our platform, simply on board themselves.
We'll be able to do a quick assessment, analyze exactly.
Of over 2000 mortgage products might best be suitable for their needs and their specific situation, get them the best rate, the best product, and get them right to close.
But beyond that, we're also going to continuously analyze their circumstances and their situation.
So if any changes or modifications or needs, like if we find a cost saving opportunity for them a year into their mortgage, we'll be able to present that to them to help them ensure that they stay in the best product.
And then among the audiences you serve and people.
You sell to is there a specific vertical a customer target or a specific product that is showcasing momentum?
So maybe it's growing quicker than some of the others.
How do you think about where is there sort of momentum within the product suite right now, especially in Canada, given the nature of the short-term mortgage cycle 1 to 5 years, we're seeing a significant uptick in mortgage renewals.
You know, 2020 and 2021 were historic real estate years.
Interest rates were at all-time lows and everybody was buying a property.
So all those mortgages are all those customers that bought homes with a 5 year mortgage are now coming up for renewal 2025 and 2026.
It was estimated that 80% of all mortgages in Canada were up for renewal in the next 12 months, and we're capturing a lot of that momentum.
Wow, OK.
How do you think about the go to market for that?
Is that through kind of meeting the demand through the brokers and the agents, or is there a direct? as well, so we love to deal through the broker channel, you know, they have such an embedded relationship with the communities that they serve.
Over 50% of consumers choose to work with a broker for the trust and for the experience.
So our platforms and technology solutions are designed specifically for that, and we've been able to really capture maximum value through some of the strategic ways that we've implemented renewal programs and Accessing data points for how our mortgage brokers can serve their customers and over the last few months, I know you've expanded revenues and you've narrowed net losses a little bit.
How, what have you been doing to sort of on both ends to sort of make that happen?
Well, the big one for us over these last couple of years has been really integrating artificial intelligence within our platform, and now we're starting to see a lot of the efficiencies of that with some of the modules and some of the systems that we've rolled out in the last 12 months.
We've literally been able to reduce expense by over a million dollars just by that.
Obviously the growing nature of our business is continuing to see our revenue grow and progress, and we're very focused on ensuring that we're managing both sides of the spectrum.
And final question for you just on the macro environment we touched on a housing market, a lot of conversations about what's going on there, a lot of questions in the air with mortgage demand.
To your point, there is sort of this wave of potential demand coming in.
How do you sort of navigate within the products for any sort of environment?
It seems like this could be very cyclical where the macros could really impact the business in different ways during different time periods.
So how do you think about sort of smoothing that out over time?
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, the nature of the real estate market as a whole is that there's always opportunity.
The opportunity just changes.
And what's very important of companies is to be able to stay ahead of a lot of what's going to be coming in the future.
Make adjustments, modifications, understand the consumer base, what their needs are, and bring products that meet that.
All right, Shiba, where can our viewers tune in or check out to learn more about the company, the business, and get updates?
Well, they can always follow us on Instagram or on X and definitely visit our website www.gopineapple.com.
All right, thank you so much, Shiba Das Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Pineapple Financial.
We'll be back next time with another episode of Treasury's Unchained.
