1516T2g1 South Korea/Project Teams/Team 1/Companies
| Team 1 | Team 2 |
| About Us | Our Companies |
We researched and visited two companies 1) Rainist Co 2) Finotek
Contents
Rainist Co
Business Model
Areas of focus: Banksalad web service recommends credit cards, which provide benefits that are most suitable to the customer, based on the consumption pattern the person entered. The mobile App service automatically analyzes the SMS of credit card transactions and recommends a suitable card based on the analysis. It also gives guidance on the card benefits. In addition, it analyzes and gives advice on individual’s consumption habit.
Reason for starting the company: They developed banksalad service in order to address the information asymmetry between financial companies and clients using data and technology. By standardizing information on all the benefits of credit cards, users can be recommended the most suitable credit cards and receive direct benefits.
Expansion plan: They intend to expand their recommendation service to savings and installment savings.
Source of revenue: They receive revenue from listing credit card companies / banks as partners on their site, and getting commission from referring customers (by using parameter '?ref=bankSaladReferencenNmber').
Learning Points
- An unexpected find on the airplane can turn into a business idea.
- Tasks that seems overly time-consuming (e.g. crawling bank credit card pages and writing rules) can be overcomed by hardwork and hiring more staff (e.g. Financial Analyst).
- However, there should be plans to automate it and make it scalable.
- Listening to customers and developing what they want can go a long way (e.g. making a spending tracking mobile app by using the SMSes sent by banks)
- It is difficult to monetize, and sometimes generating revenue seems deviating from vision or mission
- Listing only partner credit card companies / banks is unfair to non-partners
- It doesn't make sense to expand overseas when it's much easier to generate revenue from domestic market by creating a new service.
Finotek
Business Model
Areas of focus: Cloud-based mortgage processing mobile application.
Philosophy: Sincerity and trust. “growing with employees and ultimately customers”
Strategy: Serving local banks.
Expansion plans:
- Took part in German Fintech consortium
- Aim to list in NASDAQ, Aim
- Tailored programs to collaborate with banks
- Sell API to foreign companies, regulatory issues will be settled by the foreign companies
Solution:
Result:
- 78% reduce in fees
- 2-3 days process reduced to 30 minutes
Learning Points
- Kim Woo-Su, CEO of Finotek shared with us three core factors in building a great business:
- Have foresight; read more books, think and analyze with a logical mind
- Passion in people and building people; unite individuals through same dream and goal
- Endurance; “the future will come at a time which we least expect”, so one must be prepared. They did not give up amidst the tough environment and risks for 8 years
- A great business should be founded upon sincerity and trust in every decision or transaction.
- Focus on the employees, the customers will naturally be taken care of.
- Be ambitious – Finotek’s passion drives strong ambition which they aim to IPO in NASDAQ and Aim in the near future.
