Name of company Ant Group or Ant Group Co., LTD.

When was the company incorporated? The company was founded in 2004 according to their website. However, Google's profile on them along with Wikipedia which is probably where they are getting their information, states that Ant Group was officially founded on October 16, 2014. Crunbase also has this as their founding date as well. Wikipedia does state though that it was simply a rebranding from Alipay to Ant Group. Alipay was created under Alibaba in 2004 which is probably why the company uses that date as its founding date where as outside institutions look at the official legal founding of the company.

Who are the founders of the company? Jack Ma is who is widely considered the founder as he is the founder of Alibaba and who is mostly attributed as its founder. However, the Crunchbase profile on the company has Lucy Peng listed as its founder.

How did the idea for the company (or project) come about? Ant Group came about when Alibaba spun off Alipay which was a product it had developed to help with their e-commerce business. With Alipay, Ant Group was created to be a financial services company of the future and since becoming its own company has purchased other FinTech companies to build out its portfolio.

How is the company funded? How much funding have they received? The company was originally funded by its parent company, Alibaba, but since spinning off on its own last recievied a Series C funding package and is soon planning an IPO where they will plan to sell 10% of their shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and 5% on the Hong Kong Exchange. Source 1 Source 2

What specific financial problem is the company or project trying to solve? With Ant Group, the question really isn't which problem are they trying to solve, it's which problems have they yet to work on solving. Originally, Alipay was created to tackle the e-commerce problem that Alibaba was having with their business to business platform. The problem was the trust that was required to complete an online transaction and, in China, Alipay was the solution. It was a secure and trusted online payment processing platform for the Chinese market. In 2009 they then launched their mobile app allowing peer-to-peer financial transactions as well as contactless payments.

Who is the company's intended customer? Is there any information about the market size of this set of customers? What solution does this company offer that their competitors do not or cannot offer? (What is the unfair advantage they utilize?)

Which technologies are they currently using, and how are they implementing them? (This may take a little bit of sleuthing–– you may want to search the company’s engineering blog or use sites like Stackshare to find this information.)

What domain of the financial industry is the company in? Ant Group's primary domain is payment transaction and processing. However, it is also in the InvesTech and InsurTech domains per their IPO filing. What Alipay has been able to do is offer its users a set of financial services that they would otherwise not have access to. It can do this because China has only recently grown to have a successful middle class which demands these kinds of services and because this development of the middle class has coincided with the rise of technology its only natural that a FinTech company would be the one solving these issues. IPO Filing

What have been the major trends and innovations of this domain over the last 5-10 years? The major trend in the domain of payment services has really been towards ease-of-use as well as security. People want easier ways to transfer money that at the same time is secure. This goes back to the trust issue that Alipay originally solved for Alibaba.

What are the other major companies in this domain? At the scale of Alipay and Ant Group, not many. But some common ones that are well known in the U.S. would be companies like Venmo, Paypal, and Square. In China their main competitor is WeChat and their payment processing system built into their social media product.

What has been the business impact of this company so far? It has helped build up the middle class of the world's most populous country.

What are some of the core metrics that companies in this domain use to measure success? How is your company performing, based on these metrics? Like all startups the ultimate metric is valuation. Because of Ant Groups power in the Chinese market it has received multiple good valuations. The company is targeting a public valuation of $225,000,000,000 which would make it the most valuable IPO in history.

How is your company performing relative to competitors in the same domain? Ant Group is projected to become the most valuable company in the world with its upcoming IPO. With that I would say its performing quite well compared to its competitors.

If you were to advise the company, what products or services would you suggest they offer? (This could be something that a competitor offers, or use your imagination!) If I were to advise the company I would advise them to quite trying to make inroads in the United States and instead make the U.S. into an island. They are leaps and bounds ahead of every other company in this space and in my opinion Ant Group really demonstrates what the future of FinTech looks like. If China wants to really show that its the new world super power then is should continue to build and flex its might in the FinTech space and can isolate America while bringing the rest of the world in. After all, what is ~400,000,000 people when you have a nation of ~3,500,000,000?

Why do you think that offering this product or service would benefit the company? America is skeptical of China. Five years ago I would have argued that China needs America, but with the current administrations degradation of our global standing I believe it exposes the weakness of the US in that it is no longer the sole dominant power in the world. The rest of the world has recovered from WW2 and the Cold War and its a new ball game. China also has the benifit of the fact that their financial sector began to mature during this age of technological inovation so they've been able to grow with it instead of having to adapt to it like the US has.

What technologies would this additional product or service utilize? Blockchain! But seriously more of my solution is in the geopolitical arena because this company is so big and has so much money and such a far reach in the space that it is utilizing many different technologies but blockchain seems to definitely be the most impactful.

Why are these technologies appropriate for your solution? Is blockchain not appropriate for every solution? Like 5G and AI? On a serious note, in this case blockchain is perfect for FinTech because of its distributed ledger technology. This builds trust in the verification of transactions as well as automating the process of verification using cryptology.