Meet Mike Zhou, Chief Data Officer at InDebted and FinTech50 Judge…

Tell us about yourself

 

Mike Zhou is a seasoned leader with extensive experience in both technological and commercial pursuits within startups. He has led the development of a number of applied AI and machine learning solutions that have been deployed and commercialised in industry.

A thought leader in AI-driven innovation, Mike developed one of the most performant generative AI solutions in the receivables management industry. Mike is passionate about leveraging AI in frontier use cases, in particular those that align with the core competitive advantages of a startup.

 

Tell us about your company

 

InDebted is a Fintech scale-up on a mission to change the world of consumer debt for good. Through leveraging AI and human-centred technology, InDebted has developed highly performant solutions for consumer collections. With a customer first approach, InDebted has redefined the collections industry, accumulating more than 2500+ five-star Google reviews and disrupting the status quo.

InDebted currently operates in 6 regions around the world, works with 130+ client partners and to date has supported more than 5 million customers globally.

 

 

What advice do you have for companies entering the FinTech50 2025?

 

A few pieces of advice for entrants:

• Make it incredibly clear what your value proposition and potential market is. It’s important to highlight the unique angle or differentiating factor that you will leverage to capture your target market. You can leverage customer insights that you have gained through your knowledge, research and testing.

• If possible, present data or validation to back up your claims. This adds credibility and demonstrates the extent of your understanding of the problem space that you are building in.

• Demonstrate a strong understanding of the competitive landscape and do your absolute best in putting forward a compelling case for why you and your team are going to successfully compete against others in capturing the market opportunity.

 

How do you suggest entrants should stand out from the crowd?

 

Ensure you have a clear narrative and leverage powerful visuals and analogies to ensure your audience understands and internalises the problem you’re solving, and how you and your team will solve it. Your submission will likely better stand out if your audience can relate to your mission and can believe that there is no other team better suited for the job ahead.

 

Any final thoughts?

 

As always, do relevant research and understand the assessment criteria before drafting your submission. Wishing you the best of luck in your submission!