When Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ron Hose founded Coins.ph in 2014, he only had one goal in mind — to drive financial inclusion in the Philippines and eventually expand to other countries in Southeast Asia which have low penetration of formal financial services.
Ron’s determination, coupled with powerful technology and huge potential for growth in a largely underserved market, made Coins.ph a highly-attractive investment for international and local investors that included Quona Capital, Naspers, Pantera Capital, and Kickstart Ventures — all of which strongly believed in the company’s ability to scale and succeed.
The investors were right. Fast-forward to 2019, Coins.ph is now Southeast Asia’s leading mobile blockchain-enabled platform. A majority stake acquisition in Coins.ph was recently announced by the Indonesian ride-hailing firm GO-JEK, a strategic move that will allow both companies to build something bigger and better for their customers. This acquisition has also allowed its investors to make an exit, which incidentally, makes Coins.ph the first exit for Kickstart, the corporate venture capital arm and wholly-owned subsidiary of Globe Telecom that invests in digital startups globally.
What did Coins.ph do to be in such an enviable position and which other startups could learn from?
Coins.ph is a digital wallet and mobile payments app for the unbanked looking for life-improving financial services. It allows users to easily send or receive cash across online and offline platforms, transact bills payments across registered and nonegistered users, or buy mobile load top-ups.
Through the app, Coins.ph has successfully carved out a path to scale and profitability, thereby becoming a compelling fintech player for emerging markets. However, this is not to say its journey has been easy — building a valuable business meant responding to customer demands at a scale and speed uncommon in a highlyegulated industry.
Growth Lesson #1: Solve a real problem. The bigger the problem, the better the opportunity.
In 2013, when Ron and co-founder Runar Petursson did their research, the Philippines had a population of 100 million but only two out of 10 households were banked and only one out of 20 Filipinos owned a credit card. Yet, four out of 10 Filipinos were on Facebook.
Other emerging economies were in a similar position. For Southeast Asia’s population of 618 million, 59% were unbanked and 95% did not have a credit card although most were online or owned digital identities.
With this socio-economic environment where mobile penetration is high but access to financial services is low, Coins.ph saw the opportunity to reach out to a bigger number of people and make it very easy for them to access financial services directly from their phones. (PR)
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