Dmitriy Perelstein, White Rabbit (DP): Hello Oscar! Welcome to White Rabbit! Who else from your team is here with you today?
Oscar Garcia, Uulala (Oscar): Good morning everyone from Uulala headquarters. COO, Business Development team.
DP: Let's start by a quick introduction of Uulala to those who are unfamiliar. Can you tell us about yourself and your company, Oscar?
Oscar: Thanks for having me here. I think more importantly what we would like to mention about Uulala that we are Latino focused Fintech application that is really solving two major problems: how to load cash by doing an on-ramp into a system and how to give micro-credit offers. Now the industry prior to us was very fragmented in their solution in fintech. We are trying to bridge those gaps so that we have an all-inclusive solution.
We are solving 2 major issues in banking for the cash base customer (latinos) how to load cash onto fintech app and how to generate a micro credit line.
DP: Great Oscar. What brought you into this market?
Oscar: Four years ago I was brought into the financial sector by the head of the SBA under George W. Bush Cabinet. We were tasked to bring in technology to the Latino market in merchant services. We were able to prove that this demographic was beyond valuable we did 60 million in revenue in under 9 months.
Kevin Donovan, White Rabbit (Kevin): Oscar I met some of your team a couple months ago. Can you tell us how you have grown in the past 60 days with the Latino community?
Oscar: In the past 60 days we’ve gone to insurance conventions, not just blockchain but traditional conventions that touch the Latin community and we’ve been able to get by-in from the insurance owners, the convention owners. Our team on the business development side of it is really focused on bringing what we call trusted advisors into our portfolio and we’ve been able to attract some great people. Not just on the insurance side, but we have Latinos from the Harvard Grad School who are mathematical geniuses - and we’ll be updating our advisory team because of this - that are now joining us. We have attorneys that are Latinos who are looking into the blockchain that are looking into protecting us. We have relationships with the Mexican government that is now panning out. And now we have a direct relationship from the Bermuda president and his cabinet to actually help our business to come to full fruition.
DP: So give us a business case scenario of a need that Uulala is trying to solve? What's the market size? Where do you see it growing?
Oscar: need: 55% of latinos are cash base customers in US. 70% of Latinos in Mexico non banked, same goes for other countries. The problem is high fees for bank accounts ($29) on average. High fees for cashing checks 8%, high fees for bill payment $3 a bill and no credit lines for people who can not afford 1k to 5k loans, What happens to the customer base under 1k is our market. Google the amount of Latinos in your local city. Cities like New York have 2.3 million half of them are non banked 20% are underbanked.
Imagine a mother that has her child in tow that just got paid and is going to the grocery store to cash out her check. She is going to be charged 8% or right around that number to cash out that check. That means eggs and milk and pan dulce that does not go home with her. She takes that money and stands in another line to pay a bill. Again another percentage to pay that bill so she can have her utilities up but less money for milk and bread. She takes that money and sends it out for remittance to Mexico or wherever she is supporting her family. She is a hard-working mother, with child in tow. And she is sending money to her family in Mexico. I was that child that followed my mom around and seen that we are being depleted of things that we needed because my mom did not make over a thousand dollars a month. That’s our use case.
Captain OG: Very inspiring. Thank you for sharing your story
Oscar: The banking industry makes 7 trillion a year. no other industry does that.
Kevin: Oscar hearing your story and the love you have for making Uulala....Is there any incentives for the card holders?
Oscar: The incentives for the card holders are huge. Access to their money digitally meaning visa/ mastercard. All activities are meant to be used as credit worthy activities, now paying a bill will make you money not cost you money.
Captain OG: How do you envision this reaching the people that need these benefits the most who struggle to buy the bread, milk, eggs as they probably can't afford a smartphone to use your app to send or receive the funds?
Oscar: So our marketing idea or the rollout are very concrete. We are going after 3 major markets. 1. The insurance market. These are Free Way Insurance, Veronica’s Insurance, Adriana’s Insurance. These are markets that already have customer bases. Now in that industry if you are paying cash they are charging you $20 more for your insurance. On average, these places have about 500 customers per month going in. Our potential reach to this market is over a 1000 locations. Now we just signed a deal with a convention owner of this demographic that will give us access to another thousand locations. The second market is the direct sales market. The people who actually pay out large sales forces. So they have commission engines that don’t have the payment system that we are teaming up with the software companies that actually create the commission engines so that they can use our platform for the final part of the payouts. And finally, HR companies and CRM systems that are being used for all these companies that HR both in Mexico and US. That gives us another 2M people protentional use. All these three examples are people who are willing to spend 1-3 min with their customer instead of doing a social media campaign that only hits them for about 30 seconds.
Captain OG. on Incentives the more people who use the physical card or the virtual card, the more micro credit scores they build up. That means more micro credit lines
DP: Can you walk us through the process? Let's take an example of the unbanked mother who wants to send $100 to her family in Mexico or Guatemala. How does she go about this process with Uulala?
Oscar: Person A want to load cash into our system. 1. they download uulala 2. they click the button to load cash 3. the system matches them with locations where she can go to give cash 4. If a person is chosen that person can choose the rate or fee they would like to do the onboarding 5. the 2 people are matched up like an uber system, they meet and exchange cash. 6. Person A can now send money to mexico at reduced cost. Here is a video we did showing the system being tested
DP: "3. the system matches them with locations where she can go to give cash" - are these Uulala locations or are you partnered with another provider? Who are your partners?
Oscar: Insurance locations and Accredited people that can help onload money. KYC, AML is done on all our accredited partners.
Yarien Mendez: Uulala is aiming at the Latino community, unbanked and underbanked, but with my time following the team, after reading the whitepaper seeing all the demos and all the work you guys have done, the Latino community stays short. Is any plan to expand the targeted audience in the future? Also don’t you thinks that Uulala technology actually helps more than dose unbanked?
Oscar: We start with Latinos then move out to the world.
Kevin: Oscar can you walk us through on where you are with your ICO roadmap?
Oscar: The ICO or Token Generation Event is heading toward the Public stage. We have 3 rounds coming up and we have just started our international campaigns. We had to keep the Private rounds for friends & Family and accredited investors. With our technology in beta we are noiw comfortable to go to the last public rounds.
Captain OG: The ICO or Token Generation Event is heading toward the Public stage. We have 3 rounds coming up and we have just started our international campaigns. We had to keep the Private rounds for friends & Family and accredited investors. With our technology in beta we are noiw comfortable to go to the last public rounds.
Oscar: we already have ACH routing in our application. All traditional cash onboarding rails are in, ach, direct deposit and more. So we added a layer above that which is our proprietary uulala P2P cash on boarding system.
Captain OG: So Awesome..
CryptoGirl: With only less than 2 weeks left of your ICO, could you tell us how you plan to create some awareness for potential token buyers? Will uulala tokens be listed on an exchange on 1 June?
OG: We will be adding 2 to 3 weeks to that timeline becuase of moving the Token Generation Event company to Bermuda. That will give us jurisdictional protection for all our contributors.
Kevin: Oscar what are you using to verify KYC?
OG: We actually have the same system that coinbase uses. KYC is done internationally, our system provides us with top tier results we had to deny service to people already so we know we are capturing the right data. Our Investor vault has the tools we need to be compliant with regulatory demands.
DP: Oscar who do you see as your major competitor in crypto space? You have to be not the only player in this space! What do you like/dislike about them?
OG: The major competitors that we see out there in the space are really fragmented competitors. There’s someone that offers the micro credit loan, there’s someone that offers an e-wallet, there’s someone that just wallet a crypto card. But that doesn’t really solve the problem of onboarding cash for the cash-based consumer. Most of our competitors are really just trying to get crypto individuals, or individuals with existing bank accounts to use their platform. We are not. We are actually addressing the problem of cash-based consumer. Then addressing the problem of his or her activities being credit-worthy activities.
Chris Whitman: Oscar can you tell us more about how you got on nasdaq and why it is important for you?
OG: Our Nasdaq relationships have grown since then we now have the marketing director of Nasdaq working with us. This is important because the relationships that Nasdaq has is amazing. Their Executives have mandated the marketing staff to find other companies that they can vet and run as use cases. We were the first ones and we won the presentation competition of the event.
Yarien Mendez: Oscar I’ve missed something I thinks. You are adding 2-3 weeks to the ICO end date or after the ICO to be in an exchange?
OG: Time lines will be pushed out for final goals about 2-3 weeks so we can comply with regulatory issues yes.
DP: Thanks Oscar! How can we at White Rabbit help you achieve your goals? We love your vision and goals and see a real need in a solution you are creating for the problem at hand!
OG: I thank you guys for all your help we are all learning as we go but need more friends that are doing the right thing. I wanna make sure that everybody understands that we as a people are what it’s all about. It’s not just Latino. Latino is just unbanked, uncashed, or the market that’s underserved that needs our help first. Because we are talking about $2.3T of GDP of US is Latino. And when we are looking at this kind of massive income, then why not have half of this, which is cash-based going into digital platform where we can turn those individuals into credit-worthy individuals. So we are not a platform that’s taken from another industry their money. We are platform that’s creating new money from people who have never been in the formal economy. That’s our difference. While everybody else is trying to steal from someone else, we are trying to create something that doesn’t exist. So the more people that can help us, the more of you asking questions. The more people we are meeting, like that Harvard grad school mathematician that’s joining our advisory team. Or the Hardvard investors, or Nasdaq, - these are all just points that solidify what we do. So we thank everybody for their help. So let’s just go to work. And solve these problems so that we can launch an amazing product sooner than later. Not a year from now, but we are talking the next 30-45 days.
Kevin: Oscar how can we in the near future get a video interview with you about the story coming to fruition?
OG: The team and I are ready for all your interviews come to our office and lets really do something great
DP: You are issuing your tokens not on Ethereum network, but on MultiChain. Can you tell us why you picked that over other networks?
OG: MultiChain actually gives us a platform that we need to be compliant in every different country. Plus the actual transactional rate is nothing compared to Ethereum. If we were to use Ethereum’s’ platform to issue tokens, eventually we would have to pay $50M/mo just to track those transactions. MultiChain gives us ability to control those costs. We batch out the cost at the end of the day so that we only have one transactional cost. And MultiChain gives us again the abilitiy to create blockchain in the US, blockchain in Costa Rica, blockchain in Panama, blockchain in Mexico and actually chain them all together so that we are compliant with all the rules and regulations.
DP: Have you looked into EOS, Stellar, Cardano for your platform needs? Who else is coming out on MultiChain? I am not too familiar with them.
OG: We have talked to Block One that runs EOS but the system is not ready yet. We will take a look again in the future. I will get you more information on MultiChain from our CMO who is running our blockchain team so I don't make a mistake on the companies that are using them.
DP: Great thank you Oscar for your time!
