Raghunandan G is the CEO of Zolve. We talked to Raghunandan because Zolve sits in the middle of two big trends: 1) the growing need for cross-border fintech companies that can solve the needs of migrants in an increasingly global economy, and 2) the rise of neobanks in huge markets outside of the West.

1. You’re a serial entrepreneur who started in the mobility space and moved to fintech. Could you tell us more about your background and how you entered the fintech space?

2. There are many neobanks that have come up in India, like Jupiter and Niyo, but they are all essentially trying to solve domestic banking problems. You’ve instead decided to address cross-border banking issues. You touched on the cross-border TAM being larger. Could you dive deeper into that and help us understand what the dimensions are?

3. How are people solving this problem without Zolve?

4. You're partnering with the Community Federal Savings Bank in the US to offer cards and a bank account. Could you tell us about how you decided to work with this bank and how monetization works?

5. Is it the interchange revenue that you are splitting with the bank?

6. You said that the credit risk lies with you. How do you deal with a customer default on a payment or delinquency?

7. Have you partnered with vendors who do credit collection and servicing?

8. I assume the US credit bureaus have certain norms that are different from the Indian market when it comes to credit profiles. How are you building your credit underwriting model in India? Is it a proprietary tech model, and do you use vendors? In addition, how are you converging it with what the US credit bureaus or banks are looking for, if at all?

9. You’ve mentioned elsewhere that your CAC is in INR while your revenue is in dollars and that that gives you an advantage. Can you unpack that for us?

10. People moving between India and the US are typically students and IT professionals. What are the customer segments you’re currently targeting in India, and how do you see that changing as Zolve evolves?

11. Let’s say someone landing in the US from India is using Zolve. After they get there, the options open up once their credit history is built. What are your thoughts on the lifetime value and retention of these customers once they are settled?

12. From a retention point of view, you're competing with the US players on your product features, app features, rewards, cashback—all of those things. What are you benchmarking against?

13. You have different types of customer profiles: students, working professionals, diaspora. From a unit economics or a CAC/LTV point of view, how do these different customer segments compare with each other?

14. Companies like MoneyHop and Winvesta share that ambition of becoming a full-stack financial services provider, but they’re coming from a remittances and US stock investment point of view versus Zolve’s bank accounts and cards perspective. How do you think about these different approaches? Did you think about going after remittances first, or did you think bank accounts first, then layer remittances and the rest on top?

15. From an expansion point of view, what are the next two or three milestones that Zolve is working towards?

16. Zolve’s website mentions connecting students with student loan providers, especially for studying in the US. Do you see cross-selling products as a lever for growth?