Hello, and welcome to today's edition of Founders International, where we give you the update on startups and technology from outside of the US.

Here's what we have in store for you today:1. The BNPL movement has claimed one of its first victims2. This company is helping you drive revenue by using AI to read facial expressions3. This founder is a shot taker, and shot maker in life, business, and his free time

Read Time: 3 minutes and 8 seconds

The BNPL movement has claimed one of its first victims

Buy-now-pay-later companies are for Millenials and Gen-Z, what credit cards were to the Baby Boomers. Allowing people to buy something and get that dopamine hit now, but not have to worry about the consequences until later. And because of the demand for this, these companies have been running rampant, being created left and right and receiving tons of funding. (see our first ever issue)

But now the lender has become the... lended? Maybe not that, but you know what I mean.

Australia-based Openpay has gone into what is called "receivership" (a court-appointed tool that can assist creditors to recover funds in default and can help troubled companies avoid bankruptcy - Investopedia). So not quite bankruptcy, but they're pretty much throwing in the towel.

Apparently, the company has tried expanding into the United States as well as the United Kingdom, which didn't go too well. Also, rising interest rates may have hurt the company, and these two factors are thought to have played a factor in the downfall.

This is a public company in Australia, and it had to suspend trading last week, with shares dipping to $0.20 Australian (US$0.14) before it closed. Its stock previously hit $3.28 USD at its peak back in August 2020.

Just a week earlier, the company announced it had logged a record quarterly revenue of $7.1 million USD and reached a peak of 374,000 active customers for the Q2 2023.

With this news, purchasing on the platform did halt, but people who have outstanding debts are still expected to make their payments for the purchases they have already made.

Because Australia is one of the biggest markets when it comes to BNPL (with Southeast Asia on the rise), this did send a ripple through other big companies that are public there. Ones you probably have heard of such as Sezzle and Zip ended up trading lower because of the news.

We'll have yet to see how this affects the US market, and if the same fate is to come for the many BNPL companies here.

**News late yesterday, US BNPL company Affirm misses earnings, stock plunges**

Company of the day

As we know, there are two letters in the english alphabet that will make the hair on the neck of every VC stand up, cause their knees to become weak, and their pocket books to open...

A.I.

And today's company of the day, did exactly that. Meet Entropik. Founded by Ranjan Kumar, Bharat Shekhawat and Lava Kumar in 2016, this company is starting to pick up steam.

Entropik is an "emotional AI" startup that allows you to test marketing campaigns and launch products, and will help you understand consumer behavior through emotional intelligence.

For us normies, basically what they are doing is they set up webcams and cameras to understand consumers facial expressions and eye movements, along with analyzing their voices to measure how excited, unexcited, etc they are about your campaign/product.

This is supposed to help you determine whether or not consumers are excited about what you are doing, which in turn helps you drive revenue for your company as a result.

This is already trusted by huge companies such as Proctor and Gamble, Sony, KFC, Lego, and many more. They also already have 17 patents, some of them in facial coding, eye tracking, and voice AI, among others.

They just raised $25 million in a Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners and SIG Venture Capital, with existing investors such as Trifecta Capital, Alteria Capital, and the Bharat Innovation Fund also participaing in the round.

Founder of the day

Today's founder of the day is Nithin Kamath Nithin is the founder of Zerodha, which is a brokerage based in Bangalore and gives you the ability to go through an online platform to invest in stocks, derivatives, mutual funds, and more.

Nithin is cool for a couple reasons:

1. Nithin bootstrapped and founded Zerodha in 2010

2. His co-founder is his brother

3. He claims "playing basketball is his zen"

We love founder-hoopers here at Founders International. Shooting their shot on the court, and with their businesses.

Since founding Zerodha, he still has taken on zero outside capital, and it is now the largest brokerage in India with 11m users. Now supposedly worth $2b, on $607m in revenue, $256m PROFIT, growing 80% YoY. He also expanded this company to have a few different arms expanding their reach:

• Rainmatter - a sort of "incubator" that funds and and invests in Indian fintech and climate-tech companies

• Varsity - stock market and financial lessons to help people make their first investments, in an educated way (it is apparently openly accessible to everyone, and is one of the largest financial education resources on the web)

• TradingQnA - Think of this as the Reddit for Zerodha. A community forum filled with people asking and answering questions about trading and markets

• Coin - India's largest mutual fund platform for people to invest in 0% commission direct mutual funds and Govt, corporate, and gold bonds

Nithin is just the epitome of bending the world to his will, and an idol to many people in how he does entrepreneurship. Started a business that kills it and is now the biggest in his niche. Runs it with his brother. Trying out and building different businesses while running the main business. Getting buckets in his free time.

Well done sir... well done.

And that's all for today, if you want to get more follow us @Founders_Intl, or respond to this email. Yes, we respond to all emails, including yours. Try us.

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💯 Freaking sick dude🤷‍♂️ Meh, do better next time😑 Bruh, I might unsubscribe after reading that