Tuesday Team Talks №24
Live AMA on YouTube
Dear Community,
We had a great ‘Ask Me Anything’ live YouTube streaming session on Tuesday with our Co-Founder, Conrad Linand the latest addition to the team, Amaran Navaratnam, our VP of Business Development.
The session covered all the questions that have been coming our way over the last two weeks with the #FTXAMA on our social platforms. This was a perfect opportunity for our team to engage with our community, explain our business model, share use-case scenarios, enhance clarity, and share our plans for the coming few months. Access the full recording here or by clicking the video below:
For your viewing pleasure, we have transcribed a few conversations and Q&As from the AMA — complete with timestamps to watch the original:
0:00 — AMA Start
0:31 — Amaran Introduction
3:31 — The FintruX Journey — TruX
5:03 — Why do businesses need funding? Where do they go?
8:50 — How do we perform lending without third-party investors?
10:02 — Walkthrough of TruX
18:17 — Credit Risk Management
19:24 — SMEs — The Underserved Market
20:26 — Traditional securitization model
24:52 — Statistics on initial test fiat loans
25:57 — Challenges of regulation
27:05 — Difficulties of operating a two-sided market
29:40 — Issues with Traditional P2P Lending
33:19 — The importance of market research — personal analogy
37:17 — Community Q&A
43:01 — Q: Plan for next few months
49:26 — Q: Roadmap past Q2 2019
52:00 — Q: Who are your direct competitors?
1:00:47 — Q: How many SMEs have you onboarded so far for the initial testing of TruX?
1:02:00 — Q: Briefly explain what a regulatory sandbox is, and why is it extremely beneficial for FintruX to get into the Singapore MAS Fintech Sandbox
1:04:10 — Q: How do current FTX holders get involved?
1:07:22 — Q: What other countries are next on the list for growth and marketing?
1:10:16 — Potential B2C Use-Cases
1:15:01 — Next AMA and Community Ambassadors
1:20:38 — Brief summary of activities lined up for next month
1:22:15 — Inviting SMEs for Singapore beta test
1:23:33 — AMA Conclusion
Summary of TruX (6:52):
- As a small business if you don’t have enough financials, enough payment history — there’s really no way to get credit. For example, as an entrepreneur today, I am making a steady income, a steady flow of revenue is coming in from my service, I have vendors (service providers) that I have to pay, I either take the entire sum and pay my service provider and not be able to invest that money in to growing a better business, or, I use the money to grow my business and not pay my service provider on time.
- Now obviously, the latter is a very risky move, if you don’t payback your vendors and their services are critical to your business to sustain itself, that’s going to be a very hard way for you to move forward, once you have broken that trust with your vendor. And if you go with the former and not grow your business, you are just stuck there, never growing and in the worst case, not having enough money to pay back your vendors in the first place because you are a seasonal business and have cyclical payment cycles.
- So noting that is the issue and noting that fiat lending in itself has many reputational barriers, jurisdictional barriers and regulatory red tape, we thought- “How do we cut out the complex piece, how can we do lending without third party investors at all?” And that’s how we envisioned TruX.
- Entrepreneurs only want money to pay back existing debts or existing vendors. If that’s the reason they want the money, why don’t we isolate the problem to be strictly between the vendor and the client, i.e. the borrower, who already has a common connection and just need someone to put some structure into the deal, trust into the ecosystem and that’s how we came up with TruX — reputation-based business financing platform.
- The one thing about blockchain that has always inspired me is that blockchain gives power back to the people. We are enabling individuals to finally have the power to control their own decisions. Instead of relying on the bank or private lenders to give an interest rate to you, why not set it yourself and negotiate with your vendor on what’s right. Because what the vendor wants at the end of the day is for you to pay the invoice back and what you want at the end of the day is low interest rates and flexible payment terms.
- A lot of governments are interested in this product especially because we are able to target and grow a market segment that wasn’t targeted before; you know SMEs are historically the worst, underserved market in the world. Anybody who has a chance will skip over the SME market, to target a bigger market that is more profitable for them. So, at the end of the day, that’s what FintruX Network has built into. We’re a team of entrepreneurs who want to offer entrepreneurial solutions. And we want to be the one-stop resource, for anybody aspiring to build a business and help them grow it from small, medium, to large.
Community Q&A Summary:
[20:26] @Arun: Can you explain the traditional business securitization model performed in Canada?
- The traditional business securitization model was established under our Canadian company called Robocoder Corporation. We are a software provider that has 20 years of experience servicing the financial market, manufacturing, any kind of industry that needed databases as we specialized in database development. Over time, we had accumulated a very healthy client base of over 90% of the securitization market which is bulk financing. We saw a lot of the benefits that securitization does for these banks and the insurance companies. So we asked ourselves “How can we apply this on a grassroot level?” That was the thought process that led to the birth of FintruX.
- We saw a very large need for a solution like TruX, especially even within our own industry, where we saw a direct need from one of our own clients that was struggling to pay us back an amount of money.
[38:07] @A3accumulator: I am interested to know more about the IOU financing market for SME on a global scale. Is there more general data about this market and also how platforms like FTX are going to disrupt this market?
- TruX actually aims to disrupt the market by offering a solution that breaks all barriers, protects the users, and provides ultimate power to the people; all the goals of a distributed economy. Our reputation-based financing platform is providing an innovative solution to the way businesses are securing financing.
- The market we are targeting (small business sector, SMEs and startups) is a widely untapped market — historically underserved.
- We are the only financing platform with no rejection rates. Even if companies are going to come to us with no credit history, we can start them off with a nominal level of credit.
[43:01] @Simon: What are your plans for the next few months?
- In March, we are onboarding our first 50 SMEs to help them to achieve credit up to S$50,000 in Singapore.
- Afterwards, we are hoping to be enrolled with the MAS Singapore Fintech sandbox to explore more applications of our product especially in the consumer side of things.
- In May, we’re looking at onboarding 100 SMEs, providing up to S$100,000 credit for business financing, and extended consumer features.
- In June, we plan to go live with our global launch.
[49:26] @rbtti30 and @Jbhoind : Is there an updated roadmap past Q2 2019? Have all the milestones been reached?
- We’ve done a lot of due diligence and are excited about the uptake in interest in the APAC market. However in terms of future expansion, we do not want to be too descriptive about it yet, as it may change. More information will be provided when we get closer to our launch date.
- All milestones have been reached. We always release information through our bi-weekly Tuesday Team Talks blog and we also try to have a recap every month.
[52:00] @Jbhoind: Who are your direct competitors?
- There is no direct competition at the moment and we are able to clearly differentiate ourselves from a traditional p2p lending company, or traditional private lenders.
[1:00:47] @vagabond777: How many SMEs have you onboarded so far to this date for the initial testing of TruX?
- We are in the process of actively onboarding select SMEs and will release performance updates by the end of March — exactly how many SMEs were onboarded, credit granted, interest rates charged etc.; the target is 50 companies, and we’re well on our way to achieving this.
[1:02:00] @Scyther: Can you briefly explain what a regulatory sandbox is, and why is it extremely beneficial for FintruX to get into the Singaporean MAS Fintech Sandbox?
- The fintech sandbox enables us to operate without a license for a given amount of time, usually 18 months. This is important because if you operate a traditional business, with well defined rules, you know what licenses you need to get — this is very different for fintechs. Initially we thought we needed the CMS license, the rights to deal in securities. However, reading deeper into the fine print of the licenses provided by the MAS, what we want to do with TruX actually does not supersede any of their current laws, which is why we are able initiate the March beta testing without being in the MAS Sandbox environment. It is only when we want to improve our product functionality, extend to consumers, etc. that’s when we want to go to the Sandbox — to have a regulatory free environment to test out any functionalities we want, without infringing on any licensing requirements that the regulators may have.
[1:04:10] @rbtti30:How do current FTX holders get involved?
- We fully expect the FTX token to be a vital economic driver inside the FintruX platform for every product that we push, not just TruX. For future fiat integration, for consumer integrations, every thing will be touching FTX as a back layer because at the end of the day this utility token is for users to access the platform; to use the platform to its fullest.
[1:07:22] Assuming Singapore is the first market to be targeted what other countries would be next on the list for that initial phase of growth and marketing?
- We are planning to grow globally, and very quickly. We are looking into different markets that we can tap into like Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and Australia.
- We have the Money 20/20 (Singapore) event in March 19–21 & Rise (Hong Kong) event upcoming and look forward to interacting with many more interested business who require our services.
[1:14:50] — Sneak peaks on updates
- Continuing AMAs and engaging more via our Tuesday Team Talks articles
- Introduction of new staff members in each AMA, starting with the most recent hire of our Community Relations Manager
- Implementation of Community Ambassadors and the importance to our business
- The importance of hiring the right people and building a culture
- Release of forum sites focusing on entrepreneurship, how to get financing, knowledge-space
- Invitations for 50 forward thinking entrepreneurs who want to be involved in our Singaporean beta testing and achieve credit of up to S$50,000; send us an email at partnerships@fintrux.com
These are just a few snippets of the topics that were covered during the AMA. Please feel free to watch the full recording here.
We aim to continue having regular AMA sessions over the next few months and look forward to your continued interest and enthusiasm. To receive updates on all our announcements, please join our mailing list.
Yours Truly,
The FintruX Team
About us:
FintruX Network innovates smart solutions for underserved startups and SMEs. We aim to be the one-stop resource and solution provider for business growth and sustainability.
FintruX Network is comprised of a dynamic team of skilled professionals. Our technology is supported by Robocoder Corporation, which has over 20 years of enterprise software development experience.
TruX — the world’s first Smart Business Financing Platform, empowers businesses to establish global credit reputation, increase purchasing power, negotiate credit terms and transact via smart credits.
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