Several years ago, the best-selling book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” convinced people that a person knowing how to invest would be the winner of his life. If we see this as a criteria, then Yang Li, the founder of Xeenho Wallet, would be a “winner” already in young age. At his time in 2012, Yang Li was still pursuing his PhD at Central South University. Due to his research in P2P projects, he became considered as the "master of investment" by his friends and family,and even started investing their money for them.
P2P finance started to grow in China around 2008, but did not become well known among the public until 2012. Suddenly, individual investors discovered that the internet also could serve as an instrument for financial investment, allowing them to lend their money to other people for a financial return. This became attractive, especially as P2P companies started to promise clients over 10% returns. However, due to the large increase in number of platforms and lack of good practice, many scandals and bad press arose, consequently bankrupting a lot of the P2P platforms or getting them shut down. In addition, most P2P platforms were run from tier-1 cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, far away from investors in sub-tier cities, i.e.borrowers and lenders on P2P platforms were located in areas with different capital needs and risk tolerance.
Although Yang Li researched P2P platforms from an academic perspective, he discovered a golden business opportunity, as there was an obvious demand from individual investors for professional investment advice. At the same time, the market for online investment advisory was just in its infant stage, with no players offering Robo-advisory services for investors, consequently a whole untapped market full of opportunities.
Yang Li founded Xeenho Wallet in 2014, a financial asset management platform, which evaluates P2P platforms risk profiles, and re-packs P2P assets into their own low-risk portfolio. He chose to headquarter Xeenho in Changsha, Hunan province, a second-tier Chinese city, with a clear purpose: "Since there are no financial institutions locating their headquarters in Changsha, many students cannot find a financial job in the city after graduation. They can only work in marketing or other areas.”
At that time, Yang Li only had one other partner, the co-founder Huang Zhenyu. The third co-founder Yang Xue, was still working with a large financial institution in Changsha, but realized that in order to advance in her professional development in her current company, she would have tore-locate to another province. Yang Xue and Yang Li studied their PhD together, and through her work experience she has developed a unique understanding of financial risk management. Yang Li finally managed to persuade her to join after many attempts, and as they already had known each other for many years, trust was already established between them.
Another key member of the team, Ding Yan, used to be a researcher in a listed company in Hengyang, Hunan province. He was not only a classmate to Yang Li before, but also his partner in several math contests. Consequently, he was an obvious choice when built the team.
Although Xeenho has strong theoretical know-how, the reality of building a company is tough with everyday ups and downs. Yang Li nicely told this with his anecdote of a special day. On the 2nd of May 2015, when his daughter was born, Xeenho also experienced a huge increase in number of fake users signing up to receive the registration reimbursement promoted through 10 RMB digital ‘Hongbao’s’, attracting thousands of new users daily. During normal days, this number was normally under 100. The fast increase offake users coupled with the inadequate marketing cost of acquiring them, forced Xeenho to start doing fraud assessment on each new registered manually by phone.
Xeenho Wallet’s business may look simple on the outside, but is actually complex looking under the hood. Through Xeenho Wallet’s platform, investors are introduced to and guided to the right P2P asset investment for their specific requirements. Compared to registering directly on a single P2P platform, Xeenho Wallet’s approach has several advantages. 1) Each asset package is composed of a range of P2P platform assets, which diversifies their portfolio and reduce risk. 2) Xeenho Wallet conducts in-depth research and risk management of each platform listed on their platform, in order to detect sudden changes and give investors first-hand information to lower their investment risk. In other words, Xeeno Wallet serves like an investor risk management assistant, which they are also earning commissions for.
This comes with a certain operational complexity, as Xeeno Wallet has to deal with more than a thousand different P2P platforms, on a real-time information basis. If investments has to be withdrawn from a platform, they need to monitor the original creditors’ rights and debts from the packaged assets. This is the core value of Xeenho Wallet, to have first-hand information before any retail investor in regards to debtors and P2P platforms.
Since inception, Xeenho Wallet has achieved break-even and started to generate net revenue. Currently the platform has 55,867 registered users and invested 470 million RMB.
JV Review
JadeValue invested in Xeenho Wallet due to their long-term value as aservice platform for investors. In China’s emerging financial market, more platforms like Xeenho Wallet are needed, provinding investors with trustworthy and better informed investment services.
