Globe Group is out to repeat the success of its fintech arm GCash, currently the No. 1 finance super app in the country and the only double unicorn.
Ernest Cu, President and CEO of the Globe Group, said the company’s pivot into a full-fledged techco aims to provide disruptive solutions to problems that Filipinos confront day-to-day.
Speaking about the rise of GCash, Cu said: “We want to repeat that again. We look at areas where there’s a large problem to solve. It’s gotta be large because it’s got to move our needle, right?”
“So we look at a lot of nascent areas where problems continue to be pervasive and no one’s paying attention, no one’s taking the advantage of building something. If it fits the assets we have, this gives us what we call unfair advantage, then we go into it,” said Cu on NASDAQ’s Trade Talks with Jill Malandrino on the sidelines of the 2023 Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF).
Cu also spoke of the Globe Group’s ethos in a panel discussion on raising unicorns at SFF, sharing his vision of making the company responsive to the country’s problems.
In its beginnings as a core telco business, Globe solved Filipinos’ communication problems. With its solid connectivity infrastructure as foundation– its “unfair advantage”– the Globe Group has been casting a wider and wider net.
Today, beyond fintech, the Globe Group provides digital solutions in the areas of healthtech, adtech, edutech, climate tech, shared services, investments and entertainment.
It’s all about being responsive to customers’ evolving needs, much like how Cu practices to be responsive real-time to every message that comes his way.
“My responsiveness is almost real time. If I respond almost 24/7, there’s no reason you shouldn’t respond to me. In a way that reflects how your responsiveness is to customers right?” he said.
“At the end of the day, the Globe Group is a consumer service company. We are here to serve our consumers, whether it’s telecommunications, whether it’s healthcare, or whether it’s fintech. We want to instill that notion of responsiveness among our people, and I guess for me it starts at the top,” he added.
