Dmitry Dolgorukov, HES FinTech’s Co-Founder, shared some of his personal and behind-the-scenes business stories in his new interview for Tubetorial.
About Dmitry Dolgorukov:
Entrepreneur and investor with a degree in International Economics and Marketing and 15+ years of experience in financial software development projects. A member of Forbes Finance Council since 2020, a Co-Founder and a CRO of HES FinTech, and CEO at GiniMachine – an AI-driven platform that solves traditional credit scoring challenges with machine learning algorithms.
In 2018, he was ranked as one of the top 200 Fintech leaders in Europe who contributed to the industry as influencers through action.
In 2019, Dmitry was ranked as one of the most influential AI leaders in Eastern Europe.
Key Parts of the Interview
You can read the full text of the interview here. Below we organized the most important picks from it:
About launching HES FinTech
In my early twenties, I was fascinated by studying economics and considered an academic career the most likely option. Also, I was inspired by business strategy, so eventually, I started marketing strategy development for an aspiring software company. The business started rapidly scaling, and I managed to grow to the CMO position.
However, in 2012 I took the riskiest decision ever: we launched HES FinTech with my business partner, and basically started all that from scratch.
Now, as we celebrate the company’s 10th anniversary this year with almost 100 employees and 160+ projects all over the globe, I can say that it was a successful yet quite challenging decision.
About small but meaningful habits
One day I decided to openly share my gratitude to people. I make it personal and detailed, and I exercise it daily. It makes a feelable impact on your personal and professional life.
About the positioning of HES products and services
We are a hybrid (product/service) company. We deal with custom fintech software development and have two out-of-the-box products: HES LoanBox – a readymade digital lending platform, and GiniMachine – a no-code AI-based platform for decision making.
The positioning of being always there with value-added services proved to be a success. We are not just software vendors, we act more like a full-fledged technology partner with vast experience in the fintech domain and a highly skilled team ready to share valuable business insights. To back it up with facts: 80% of our Business Analysts have a professional background in large banks. It gives them a critical understanding of the customer’s business processes and helps build more trust with customers.
About the team, the hiring policy, and employee retention
The HR department follows the industry standards in hiring and we do our best to make the onboarding process as smooth as possible. We are large enough to have well-designed policies developed. At the same time, we are under 100 employees, so it allows the team members (and our customers) to address C-level management with their questions or suggestions directly at any time.
About company funding
HES FinTech has been bootstrapped. It was a successful solution that allowed us to grow faster due to a limited number of decision-makers. However, for now, we have various growth scenarios for the future. Let’s get back to the question in a few years:)
About competitive advantages
Saudi Aramco and Customers from Africa – the Footprint of HES is in 30+ Countries Now
For sure, we have overlap with dozens of market players worldwide, but our expertise and unique proposition (a combo of products and services) and unique regional expertise allow us to be highly competitive.
Remember that Lewis Carroll character? “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”
This is what we do. In 2022, we launched a new product: HES LoanBox. It helps us scale up our business due to covering more market segments and getting more freedom compared to the service-based approach.
About customer success stories
It would be difficult to choose the top story. It is equally encouraging to be a part of a large bank’s success and automate lending in a startup that has just overgrown Excel.
HES helped a business with micro-lending automation for European markets. The company showed 400% growth in a couple of years.
I can tell you about our project for Wa’ed – Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Center that greatly impacts the Saudi business community. We launched a few projects in Africa that add up to the expansion of inclusive lending.
I’d love to, but I cannot share any of our large-scale projects in Canada because we signed an NDA. Some of our case studies are available at hesfintech.com.
About online presence
I share some of the company’s news, great fintech events, and comments on the industry trends on my LinkedIn profile. So you are welcome to contact me there with any questions or suggestions. And subscribe to my company’s blog updates: to HES FinTech and GiniMachine.
Ready start working with HES FinTech? Get in touch with our team!
