“It is an undeniable fact that only a founder can truly understand what it is like to create and run a business and have the stubborn optimism required to make it succeed.”
Stuart Low, CEO and Founder, Biza.io
Biza.io, a financial technology company, was founded in 2017 by Stuart Low, a former head of innovation at Rabobank Australia and New Zealand.
The company had humble beginnings, with Stuart operating out of his garage in Sydney, Australia, before establishing its core engineering team in Brisbane.
Stuart’s motivation for starting Biza.io stemmed from his work with the Data Standards Body, an agency responsible for creating Consumer Data Rights (CDR) standards. He recognised that financial institutions needed technical partners to help them meet their obligations and address challenges related to the CDR. This realisation prompted him to launch Biza.io with a mission to provide cutting-edge technical solutions to financial institutions.
Despite limited resources, Stuart managed to bootstrap the company for the first four years of operation. However, his hard work paid off when Biza.io successfully raised $7.5 million in its first round of funding in August of last year, with OIF Ventures and Jelix Ventures as lead investors.
With this infusion of capital, Stuart has been able to expand his team, which now comprises 16 skilled professionals. He has ambitious plans to hire up to 30 more employees this year, reflecting his company’s rapid growth and increasing demand for its services.
Stuart has over 20 years of experience in the finance and telco industries, having gained diverse expertise in distributed systems, API architecture, data storage, and identity infrastructure throughout their career.
Prior to their current role, he served as the Engineering Lead within the Data Standards Body (DSB) responsible for Consumer Data Rights (CDR). Before that, they spent almost five years as the Head of Innovation for Rabobank in Australia and New Zealand.
“During my time at the DSB, it became apparent that many organisations were going to struggle with delivering on their obligations for the CDR and software proposed by the government was great for demo purposes but not for implementation in the real world.
“Consequently, I left the DSB to start my own business, Biza.io, in 2017 to help data holders and data recipients to meet their CDR regulatory obligations through our SaaS product coupled with a focus on leveraging the nascent ecosystem toward delivering value for organisations and consumers alike”
‘CDR has the potential to reshape the consumer landscape in Australia’
Drawing upon their experience and expertise in the Consumer Data Rights (CDR) realm, the individual identified a gap in the market for a pure-play CDR vendor that could provide guidance to organisations navigating the CDR journey and help them fully leverage its benefits.
“I understand and strongly believe that the CDR has the potential to reshape the consumer landscape in Australia, and what one can achieve through CDR is very exciting for consumers, businesses and innovation alike. “
“I not only had the core knowledge and expertise, but I also had a unique perspective on solving the problem at hand. The business had a unique opportunity to capitalise on this capability in a blue ocean environment.”
Challenges faced
During the first five years of Biza’s operation, the founder’s commitment to the business was unwavering in the face of potential failure, ultimately leading to profitability through bootstrapping. It is a reality that only those who have founded and managed a business can fully comprehend the challenges and unwavering optimism required to achieve success.
“As we successfully raised $7.5m in a Series A funding round, led by OIF Ventures and Jelix Ventures in August 2022, the next challenge has been to maintain and strengthen the culture we had when we were a team of six people as we approach 40.”
“I think the Consumer Data Right will be a transformative piece of national infrastructure that enables data to flow cleanly, consistently and with informed consent, enabling consumers to access high quality, lower cost products as well as providing a springboard to innovative market offerings which no one has yet thought of.”
Biza.io has developed a suite of products from scratch that are tailored to meet the unique needs of Consumer Data Rights (CDR). With the rapid pace of change in the ecosystem, it is essential for organisations to be CDR-compliant from the outset. However, they also require the flexibility to extend beyond CDR compliance to avoid the endless cycle of lifecycle management in pursuit of the next compliance deadline.
To address this need, Biza.io’s platform is designed to provide the flexibility necessary to support both current and future use cases for the CDR. Moreover, the platform has been developed to ensure that it remains relevant and up-to-date with the evolving regulatory landscape.
This level of flexibility allows organisations to focus on their core business objectives and goals without worrying about the constraints of CDR compliance.
In addition to the platform’s flexibility, Biza.io’s experience in the CDR ecosystem is unparalleled.
Biza Holder as a Service (HaaS) is a comprehensive solution that provides organizations with a turn-key approach to delivering their Consumer Data Right (CDR) obligations. Typically, the engagement process begins with the establishment of a test environment, followed by a lightweight API integration with the customer’s source systems. Once the integration is complete, the solution is tested and refined, and the process to promote it to Production is streamlined to ensure a seamless transition.
In most cases, Biza.io’s HaaS solution enables customers to get from project initiation to Production readiness in as little as six weeks. This rapid turnaround time is made possible by the HaaS solution’s ability to cover all technical requirements of the CDR, allowing customers to focus their efforts on identifying the necessary data sets and presenting them in the prescribed format.
By providing a comprehensive turn-key solution, Biza.io’s HaaS solution enables organizations to effectively manage their CDR obligations with minimal effort and maximum efficiency. The HaaS solution eliminates the need for customers to develop complex technical solutions from scratch, allowing them to focus their attention on more critical business objectives. With the Biza Holder as a Service (HaaS) solution, organizations can seamlessly navigate the ever-changing regulatory landscape of the CDR and unlock its full potential.
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