FinTech startup XQuant CEO and founder Chea Srun on business, financial industry and living the dream

by James · November 23, 2022

A good business model, good partners and genuine passion is all you need to start your startup; this is Korean FinTech startup XQuant Inc.’s CEO and founder XQuant mantra and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. The Chinese-born founder of XQuant was raised in Paris and worked in the financial industry as a trader for over three decades. He first worked in Tokyo for 10 years and then moved to Seoul in 2005 as head of trading for Macquarie Group.

Passionate about technology and artificial intelligence, he applied AI to investment decisions after taking charge of the strategic investment portfolio at Hana Financial Investment in 2016. Finally, in 2019, he created his company XQuant with former colleagues from Macquarie.

XQuant is an AI specialist company providing automation and data analytics to financial institutions and currently has 15 employees worldwide. XQuant has employees in Moscow, Tunis and Seoul. The company is currently working with NICE and Hana Financial Investment in Korea.

CEO and founder of XQuant Chea Srun had a conversation with KoreaTechDesk, about his journey as a startup entrepreneur, XQuant services, future plans and advice for budding entrepreneurs.

Please tell us about your background and your journey as an entrepreneur.

I am the CEO of XQuant, an AI Fintech company based in South Korea. I am of Chinese origin but became French after migrating to France when I was a child. I worked for 28 years as a trader for several banks and securities companies and retired in 2018. That’s when I decided to become an entrepreneur.

When and why did you launch XQuant?

I started XQuant with two of my former colleagues. All the partners and founders worked with me since 2005, when I moved to Korea. We all wanted to take on the challenge of becoming first-time entrepreneurs.

We share the same passion to do something more in artificial intelligence and software. Since we already worked in finance, we knew the industry. We thought about using AI to create software for the financial world. We know what the problems are, and we know the potential customers. This is our competitive advantage.

How does XQuant help the financial industry?

When we started in 2018, we saw that there was a lot of inefficiency in the banks. Many processes are done manually; for example, in the back office, when there are some confirmations of operations, people do the input manually, which is time-consuming and also prone to errors. We provide them with an application that can automatically read these confirmations without manual input.

How does the XQuant software work?

It takes a PDF file, finds keywords and the values associated with those keywords. We also use natural language processing (NLP) to understand the meaning of what we find. . Next, we translate change everything into structured data. We use a combination of traditional algorithms, AI, and OCR and NLP.

What are the benefits of using XQuant services?

Our solution will help our customers save a lot of time. For example, a document that would take half an hour to process manually with our software will take five to ten minutes. It also helps them avoid making mistakes. It also allows customers to make reconciliations with their existing database.

Can you provide successful examples of the XQuant service?

In Korea, we have two significant customers: one customer is Hana Financial Investment. They use our application to save time for the Front and Middle Office. Another customer is NICE P&I, one of the largest financial companies in Korea. They use it to report. They have transaction documents they receive from the customer, and they must report to the authorities. So they use the application to process the document and then send the reports to KRX.

What is your business development and expansion strategy?

We currently focus on Korea, but our solution can also work outside of Korea, for example in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Europe and North America.

Our strategy will be to first have success in Korea and then target overseas customers. We will start with Hong Kong and Singapore, Australia, and then we will go to Europe and North America.

Can you talk about XQuant’s team and company culture in terms of employee management style, niring or motivational approach, etc.?

A unique thing about XQuant is that the company’s culture is global and international. We are a Korean company with a foreign founder, which is quite rare in Korea. Of course I have Korean co-founders, and also a team of 8 people based in Tunisia doing the development. We also have two other colleagues in Moscow.

We take everyone’s background into account. For example, during the month of Ramadan, we changed our working hours for the Tunisia team so that they can sleep during the day and work at night. In Korea, we have switched to a hybrid structure where people work three days in the office and two days at home.

Why did you choose South Korea to launch your startup?

In the beginning, I registered my company in Hong Kong because it is a great economic place and a good place to do business. But because I lived in Korea, someone told me about some programs that the Korean government has for startups, like giving them free offices, subsidies, etc. So then I incorporated an XQuant office in Korea.

Last year we participated in the K-Startup Grand Challenge, a program that attracts thousands of companies from abroad. And only 60 companies have been selected for an incubation programme. At the end of the program there is a competition and we were very proud to win second prize.

What is your investment strategy for the future?

If you want to grow faster, you need funds. We have been careful about hiring people. However, sometimes due to resource constraints, we had to let go of some business opportunities. So getting an investment is something we are thinking about. It will allow us to hire more people, grow faster, offer more services and develop more products.

Any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs?

I am very lucky to have good partners. If I had been alone, my life would have been much more difficult. So get some good partners and work with people you can trust.

Another important thing is to have a good business model. Think about what you want to do, believe in yourself. This is a very competitive world. There are many good ideas, and many people talk about them, but only a few actually succeed in doing what they want to do.

I started coding when I was a teenager and I wanted to develop software and sell them. Being able to start XQuant is like realizing my dream. Every day I have a sense of accomplishment.

What are your thoughts?