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Endava

Endava – Multinational Software Development Company Named After Two Companies Merged In 2000.

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Endava is a multinational software development company that emerged in 2000. It was formed as a result of a merger between two companies, Concise and Compudava. Endava mainly operates in various European countries and Latin America. The client offices of the company are located in Western Europe and North America whereas the delivery offices are located in Eastern Europe and Latin America. The headquarters of the company is based in London, UK. Endava offers ample solutions to its clients and some of them are user interface design, strategy consulting, Internet of Things, agile software development, and various automation solutions.

About Endava

Endava was established with the main goal to redefine the relationship between people and technology. The company offers its solutions to a vast field of companies including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare sector, retail, etc. Endava fuels the digital transformation for its clients and also accelerates the performance of the dynamic digital platforms. Endava currently has more than 10,000 employees at various locations of the world such as Australia, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, etc. Though the company’s major delivery offices and close-to-client offices are located in Europe and America, they have also extended the market to various Asian countries.

Endava’s recent spotlight is on the project APAC, that is, remaining digital across the Asia Pacific. Endava’s growth in the Asian and Australian markets started a bit late as compared to the European and American markets. The company is also working in association with other companies like Santander, Citizen, pollinate, etc. Endava has also formed Endava Private Equity Group from a merger with Intuitus Advisory. This body was formed particularly to offer digital advice throughout the entire investment life cycle.

Endava
Image source: www.endava.com

History of the Company

In 2000, Endava was formed in Chișinău, Moldova. After the two companies merged, the joint company was named Endava Group. The company has made several accomplishments in the past two decades. It has also made several acquisitions to broaden the market and acquired different client profiles. In mid-2015, Endava acquired a Serbia-based company called Power Symbol Technology. Later that year, It also acquired a company called Nickel Fish Design, an agency for UX and design. In 2016, the company acquired Integrated Systems Development Corporation which had an existing market in Netherlands, Bulgaria, and Romania. This acquisition broadened the client base of the company.

A few years ago Endava acquired Velocity Partners, a company headquartered in the US, and delivery offices in Latin America. It was mainly an agile software solution provider. In 2018, Endava established a partnership with Bain & Company. And in the same year, it also filed an IPO and started trading in the New York Stock Exchange. The company also became a principal partner in the FinTech Alliance, which was launched by the UK government. In 2019, the company decided to open two new marketplaces in different regions of Romania. Last year, Endava acquired a Brooklyn-based company called FIVE which is a design and marketing agency. It recently acquired another company called Levvel LLC. Endava has also recently announced that it is targeting to achieve net-zero emissions as an organization.

Awards & Recognitions

In 2010, Endava was featured in Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA and also in the list of 500 fastest-growing companies in EMEA. In 2011, It became one of the top 50 European Growth Companies and in the same year, the CEO of Endava, John Cotterell was was selected as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. It also received Digital Impact Awards for the “Best use of mobile and portable devices.” The company was named as one of the top 100 digital agencies across the globe by Econsultancy in 2013. The Romanian market of the company is very strong and it won the “Brand of the Year” award in Romania for two consecutive years.

John Cotterell – CEO

John Cotterell founded Concise in 2000 which merged with Compudava to form Endava. So, he is a part of a company from the very beginning and made it a very successful and impactful business. He started his career in the computer service industry with Capgemini and currently, he has more than 30 years of industry experience.

Wise

Wise – A Multimillion-Dollar Fintech Company That Emerged Out Of A Sudden Plan.

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Wise is a young fintech company based in Shoreditch, England. Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus founded the company in 2011. Earlier in 2021, Wise went public through a direct listing on London Stock Exchange and it was valued at $11 billion. The journey of Wise refers to one of those stories when two people meeting at a party started talking about their life problems. From figuring out a viable solution to making millions in revenue, Wise has achieved massive success in ten years. The company also received an impressive amount of funding since 2011 which could be because both the founders were already established in their professional careers.

The Idea Behind Wise

Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus both were living in London when they met in 2007. The two co-founders started a conversation at a party only to realize that they share a common problem. Both Kristi and Taavet send money back to their home countries and every month they need to convert the currency. Taavet used to convert his Estonian salary to pounds whereas Kristo converted his salary to Estonian kroon for paying his mortgage. So, initially, these two fellows devised a solution that was exclusively for both of them. Every month Kristo topped up Taavet’s bank account, setting the amounts according to the mid-market exchange rate while Taavet did the same for Kristo. This arrangement helped them make big savings but none of them decided to open up a company.

After Kristo and Taavet made arrangements for themselves the word traveled fast to other Estonian experts. Due to the huge amount of savings that came with the idea, they turned it into a business without any plan of doing it in 2007. In 2011, they officially established this money-exchange forum and it was called TransferWise. The business started flying only after 15 fifteen minutes of TechCrunch publishing an article. Kristo said that the transactions never stopped.

Wise
Image source: www.gavi.org

Executing The Plan

When Kristo and Taavet came up with this idea of overseas transfer, they were both working at different companies. In 2011 they decided to quit their jobs and for the first year, they self-funded the company. The company eventually started attracting many investors that also include the famous billionaire, Peter Thiel. Today, the company processes transactions for more than ten million active customers who save around $1.5 billion every year that goes as bank fees. The first year when Wise operated, the total amount from the transactions summed up to €10 million. The company gained popularity so fast that after a year it was named “East London’s 20 hottest tech startups.”

In 2012 the company was featured by several big magazines as one of the top startups in the country. Till 2013 the company also allowed its users to purchase bitcoin but due to pressure from banking providers, it was discontinued. The same year, a comparison site called Monito revealed that transactions in Wise are 83 cheaper on average as compared to big banks of the UK. In 2015, the company also made it to the top 10 on CNBC’s 2015 Disruptor 50 list. Later in 2015, Wise was named World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer. In February 2021, the company rebranded itself Wise from TransferWise. This rebranding wanted to reflect on the fact that the company has expanded its services as it goes beyond just international money transfers.

About The Founders

Kristo Käärmann is the famous co-founder of an extremely successful startup called Wise (earlier TransferWise). He studied mathematics and computer science and started his career as a consultant at PwC. Before co-founding Wise with Taavet Hinrikus, he worked at Deloitte for more than four years. He is also the current CEO of Wise, which filed its IPO in 2021.

Taavet Hinrikus is a famous entrepreneur and investor who started his career at Halo Interactive DDB. It worked at several companies before co-founding Wise that also includes being the Director of Strategy at Skype. After he and Kristo came up with the solution of overseas transfer, he spread the word on Skype which helps them gain a potential customer base before officially launching the company.

FactSet

FactSet – Solving All Financial Industry Problems Using The Latest Technology.

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The rise of the IT industry has given great opportunities to other fields to level up their game using technology and remain up to date and relevant in today’s changing trends. Thus from hospital industries to aviation, from hospitality to finance, every field has opted to include technology to achieve the required growth in lesser time.
Talking about the finance industry, there has been a rise in the number of fintech companies as well and companies that provide software solutions to such companies. FactSet Research Systems Inc. falls into the latter category, a financial data, and software company that chose a traditional way of working in the beginning, but today is offering services based on the latest technologies. The company is about more than forty years old, but it has tried to walk with the changing trends, and thus, today is known as one of the leading financial data and software companies.

About The Company

Howard Wille and Charles Snyder founded FactSet in 1978. The company is an American financial services company, with its headquarters based in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States. The company is responsible for data integrations, large-scale transitions, reporting, and research analysis, API integration, index services, portfolio data management, etc. It is a publically traded company and trades with the symbol FDS on New York Stock Exchange. In the past 43 years, FactSet has reached 22 countries and has set up offices in 48 different locations. It has over 10000 people working for it globally and made annual revenues worth US$1.49 billion in the financial year 2020. With high revenues in 2020, FactSet became a unicorn 2020.

FactSet
Image Source: financialit.net

Founding FactSet

Howard Wille and Chuck Snyder founded FactSet in 1978. The two co-founders used to be co-workers at Faulkner, Dawkins & Sullivan, Wall Street. At the beginning of the 70s, computers became quite popular for office work, and with the acquisition of Faulkner, Dawkins & Sullivan by Shearson, the two thought of founding a company of their own that would directly sell user data to their clients. Hence in 1978, they founded FactSet, a company that began with delivering data on paper to the clients under the program, “Company FactSet”.
During the early 80s, FactSet offered its clients the option to download data directly to their spreadsheets, making the process simpler for the clients. In 1989, the company also started a new and advanced service with the name Private Database Service. The service helped users directly include the proprietary data into their research information.
In the next decade, Company released its software for Windows operating system and expanded overseas by establishing offices in countries like London and Tokyo. During the mid-90s, the company was serving the top investment managers in the US. In 1995, FactSet was renamed FactSet Research Systems Inc., and the next year, it went public on NYSE in 1996. In further years, the company released platforms like Portfolio Management Workstation, Economic Analysis, and Company Explorer. Along with those platforms, it also introduced the DIRECTIONS interface and Online Assistant for those platforms. It also started a 24*7 customer care telephone service in 1999.
In the next few years, the Company included more products and applications such as SPAR, Data Central, Marquee, IBCentral, etc. Later, the company merged DIRECTIONS interface, Marquee, and IBCentral into one, to form FactSet, a more versatile product for the FactSet clients. In further years, FactSet made some acquisitions including of Thomson Fundamentals database (2008), Market Metrics (2009), StreetAccount (2012), Revere Data (2013), Code Red Inc (2015), Vermilion (2016), BISAM (2017), Data Managed Solutions (2017), Truvalue Labs (2020), etc., adding to the growth of the company.

The CEO At FactSet

F. Philip Snow is the current CEO of FactSet. He is a B.A. graduate in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and holds a Master’s degree in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Snow started his career by working at companies like Global Content Sales and Americas Sales. He joined FactSet in 1996 and served the company in different positions. For a long time, he handled the Asia Pacific regions for FactSet, operating from Tokyo and Sydney. In 2015, he became the CEO at FactSet. He is also a board member of the company.

Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo – A Multinational Financial Conglomerate With Assets Worth $1.9 Trillion.

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William Fargo and Henry Wells co-founded Wells Fargo & Co, in 1852. Today, Wells Fargo & Company is one of the biggest financial service companies in the entire world. The corporate headquarters of the company is based in San Francisco, California and the operational headquarters is based in Manhattan. Last year, the company ranked 30 among the Fortune 500 companies in terms of total revenue. Wells Fargo Bank, one of the subsidiaries of the company also ranks fourth among US banks in terms of total assets. The multinational company, we know today as Company was formed by the merger of the original company and Norwest Corporation back in 1998.

About the Company

From the 19th century till today, Company has created a highly reputed fame for itself. In 2014, the company was named the most valuable bank in the world and the next year it became the world’s largest bank by market capitalization. The company shares the title of “Big Four Banks” of the US along with Citigroup, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase. The company currently has around 70 million customers spread across 35 nations globally. There are more than 8,000 branches of the company and approximately 268,000 employees as of 2020. The company currently has four subsidiaries, namely, Wells Fargo Advisors, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Wells Fargo Rail, and Wells Fargo Securities. The main services provided by the company are community banking, consumer lending, student loan, equipment lending, asset management, securities, etc.

Wells Fargo
Image source: wikimedia.org

History of Wells Fargo

Henry Wells and William Fargo are the two founders of the company. Before they founded Company, they established the famous multinational company, American Express. So, both of them were experienced entrepreneurs which helped them become visionaries. The company was founded back in the 1800s to provide express and banking services in the state of California. Eventually, other subsidiaries of the company were established with an increase in the number of services.

In 1866, a major consolidation took place uniting Holladay and Overland Mail with Company. The banking and express operations of the company were separated from the main division as it merged with Nevada National Bank to form Wells Fargo Nevada National Bank in 1905. After this merger, the entity again merged with Union Trust Company in 1923 and it became Wells Fargo Bank. This is how the company gradually expanded its territory and established its prime subsidiaries.

Major Events and Acquisitions

After multiple mergers and forming new subsidiaries, Company started acquiring a series of companies in the 1980s. In 1986, the company acquired Crocker National Corporation, a US bank from Midland Bank followed by Bank of America which is a personal trust business. The company closed a giant deal in 1991 when it acquired 130 California branches from Great American Bank. In 1995, the company started offering internet banking and it became the first-ever big US financial company to provide this service. The company closed a deal for $11.6 billion when it acquired First Interstate Bancorp in 1996 which was the US’s eighth-largest banking company back then. In 1998, Norwest and Wells Fargo merged but the former decided to continue the business under the name.

After the merger, the company’s first acquisition was National Bank of Alaska followed by First Security Corporation, both in 2000. Some of the other companies were acquired by H.D. Vest Financial Services, Placer Sierra Bank, the construction unit of CIT, Century Bancshares of Texas, and many more. In 2008, Company decided to buy Wachovia for $14.8 billion. At the same time, Citigroup also offered to buy the same and threatened Company legally. But, the shareholders approved the deal with Wells Fargo as the company offered seven times more than Citigroup. The deal was closed in the same year. The company recently made Charles Scharf its new CEO in 2019.

The shareholders approved the deal with Wells Fargo as the company offered seven times more than Citigroup. The deal was closed in the same year. The company recently made Charles Scharf its new CEO in 2019.

Founder

William Fargo has a major contribution towards building the modern financial firms of America. William along with his business partner Henry Wells founded American Express Company and Wells Fargo. He started his career professionally when he got a job as a clerk in the forwarding house of Dunford & Co. In 1850, the American Express Company was founded by merging three companies and William was made its Secretary while Henry its President.

azimo

Azimo: Unveiling the experience of Faster and Cheaper Fund Transfers Across the World!

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In the present scenario, digitization mapping all the sectors. In fact, it changed every aspect of life. Thus, financial services also adapted these changes to stand in today’s world. Azimo is one of the financial start-ups that provide services for digital international money transfer. However, the company made it possible to stand out amongst tough competitors like Fintech and WorldRemit. Also, the company enables simple, fast, and secure way to transfer money globally. In fact, Azimo’s service is cost-effective and available in 125+ countries around the world. Michael Kent, Marta Krupinska, Ricky Knox, and Marek Wawro establish it in 2012. Since then the company delivering the best financial service.

Azimo- New way of financial service

Michael Kent, Marta Krupinska, Ricky Knox, and Marek Wawro started the new era of financial service with Azimo establishment in 2012. In a short period, Azimo enabled a faster and safer way of online money transfer. However, it uses technology to democratize financial services. So that everyone has access to the service, no matter wherever it is. Its headquarters is located in London, UK. Also, the company has offices in Poland.

Vision and Mission of the company

The vision of the company is to democratize financial services so that it is affordable and available to all. While providing a better way to share money around the world is the mission of the company. As well, improving the lives of millions of people with its best financial service is also the mission of Azimo. With Azimo, the user can receive or send money to any bank. However, to speed up the process they can use social media accounts along with a debit card or bank account. So, it is possible to send money to over 125 countries via PC or mobile using a social media account.

How Azimo works?

Azimo has partners in around 195 plus countries. Also, they work with the world’s largest payment companies. To achieve the motto to enable safe money transfer, FCA and HMRC regulate the Azimo’s transactions. However, to speed up the transactions it holds funds in most currencies around the world. So that Azimo users can transfer funds instantly to over 60 countries. Furthermore, the company acquired half a million users and offers 270,000+ cash pick-up locations on the earth. Besides, the company often updates its app with new features to offer the best user experience.

Founders of Azimo

Michael Kent

He is the co-founder as well as CEO of Azimo. Michael is also the founder of a small world financial services group. This is a well-known European money provider. However, he is an experienced FinTech entrepreneur, an expert in deal-making and business transformation.

Education and Career

From 1994 to 1997, he attended Cambridge University to study Land Economy. After that, he studied an MBA at INSEAD.

Michael is the founder of Tandem Bank where he also served for 5 years. Furthermore, he is one of the partners at Hexagon Partners in the last 15 years. Hexagon partner is a well-known equity investment company. Also, he is an investor as well as an advisor at Curve ltd and Complies advantage. Presently, Michael is CEO at Azimo.

Marta Krupinska

Marta is a tech entrepreneur and diversity advocate. She named in the list of Forbes in 30Under30 in 2016. Also, she was on the list of London’s Most Influential People 2017 and 2018 by Evening Standard. In 2018, Krupinska honored as Forbes top 60 Female Tech Executives globally.

Presently, she is working at GovTech. Krupinska helped in the establishment of Azimo and FreeUp. Apart from that, Marta is Head of Google for Startups UK.

Education

She attended Columbia University for an executive development program. Also, she attended the center for Leadership for a degree in Leadership Academy for Poland. Marta pursued MA in psychology from Jagiellonian University, where she also studied Organisational psychology.

Ricky Knox

He is a serial entrepreneur and has built miscellaneous successful businesses. Ricky has built five technology disruptors. Especially in telecoms and fintech. Also, he co-founded Tandem and Azimo. In 2003, he also co-founded the GSM system. However, he is the director of the Small World Financial Services Group. At Azimo, he is serving as a Non-Executive Director. Apart from that, Knox is also one of the Managing Partners at Hexagon Partners.

He attended INSEAD for MBA.

Marek Wawro

He is the co-founder of Azimo. Presently, he is serving as a CTO at Future Finance. Also, work as Google Launchpad Mentor. Marek is an experienced technical leader having a strong background in Requirements Engineering as well as Software Architecture. Wawro studied at the University of the West of England.

Successes of the Azimo

The company enables innovative money transfer service which is affordable and available to all. After one year of formation, the company had raised 31 million USD in funding from several investors. Includes, Greycroft, Frog capital, Quona capital, etc. Also, to explore the service in Asia, Japanese company Rakuten showed interest and invested in Azimo.

Awards and recognition of the company

In 2018, Azimo won the Remittances award at United Nations. Also, it marked the name in Britain’s 100 private companies with the fastest-growing sales. Azimo also honored as the Best Global Money Transfer Company in 2017. It also named the Fastest Growing Companies in the UK in the same year. Further, it honored as a Best Remittance Service to Africa in 2016. As well, awarded for Innovation on money transfers. The company also became Judge’s Overall Favourite for Ease of Use and Adoption in financial service. However, the company ranked first in the list of Top 10 money-saving apps.