‘Being Naive Is a Feature, Not a Bug’: Abhinov Balagoni, CEO Pax Credit

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I have been a computer geek since my school days. Being an engineer, I ventured into technology entrepreneurship during my undergrad as it seemed like a cool thing to do. Since then, I have worked on a variety of problems, in each case helping take a step towards the desired solution. Currently, I’m building a solution aimed at international students to ease their financial needs.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Our startup is called Pax Credit. Pax Credit provides cross-border financial services for international students. Currently, we help international students pay university tuition fees in local currencies and save them about $1000 when compared to local banks.

What is the origin story?

Back in 2015, when I was moving from India to Singapore for my education, for the first time, I had to transfer money out of the country to pay tuition fees. During this process, I discovered that by opting for a service from a different bank, I could save as much as $800. This experience helped me realize that financial services aimed at international students are not optimal in process, pricing and access. That is how Pax Credit got started.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

Our founding team has known each other for years, and it is fun to work with people who have shared interests in a trusted environment. Our founding team has a complementary skill set of full-stack engineering and business development, both of which are required at an early stage. We built a deep understanding of the problem by interacting with thousands of international students ourselves.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

I find the crypto/blockchain space to be fascinating, and I would have been working in this space if not for Pax Credit.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

For us, transaction volume and average revenue per user are the core metrics. We currently measure success through monetary and time savings for our users when compared to local banks for a given transaction.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

Our traction is completely organic without having to spend even a $1 on customer acquisition and, despite our current product experience having much room for improvement.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

Cryptocurrency and blockchain are the technologies I'm most excited about. Incorporating them into traditional financial services will change the business models.

I'm worried about the widening digital literacy gap in the workforce. This could limit their economic opportunities as we are moving towards a full-fledged technology-integrated world.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

Hacker Noon is one of the few publications that help you discover and learn new technology trends at length. Glad to see our work published on Hacker Noon.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Being naive is a feature and not a bug. Focus and level up your strengths but be aware of your limitations and get help.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

There are no rules of thumb for building a successful business. It is better to make an informed and independent decision with the available information in a given context.