James Zhang: Bringing Emerging Markets Onchain With Jambo
Episode publishedPodcast: The Delphi PodcastThe Delphi Podcast
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You're now plugged in to the Delphi podcast. Sir James, welcome back on the podcast. It's your second time now. I think it's about 2 or 3 years on since the first time you're here. So, yeah, super excited to catch up on all of the latest with Jambo. Maybe for those that, didn't tune into the first one, you could give us a a quick high level summary on on kind of who you are, your background, and then let's jump into Jambo.
Yes, sir. First of all, I appreciate you having me on the pod. I'm James, cofounder and CEO of Jambo. Ethically Chinese, grew up my entire life in, Central Africa, DRC. Family's 3rd generation from there. Ended up New York, so computer science, got a crypto. Essentially started Jumbo because I realized cross border payments, remittance, bank in the bank, basically, all issues that I grew up with in Africa. Right? Continent of over 1.4000000000 people, 54 countries. Even some of these very simple financial tasks are still very hard there or you pay a lot of middlemen fees. But, essentially, rea
Awesome. I, a lot of a lot of people go on very long winded rents when you asked to do a high level summary, but nailed it. I, I appreciate that. So, yeah, would love a bit of a refresher for the audience as well. Like, what is Jambo?
Yes, sir. So Jambo, we're building the largest mobile on chain infrastructure and network. Essentially, when you come into the Jumbo phone, there are 20 apps preinstalled. First of all, say let's just put a scenario here. Say you're a 19 year old in Sao Paulo, Brazil, our largest market. You see the phone, $99 is cheaper than any other smartphone you see on the market by at least 20%. You buy the phone, you come into it, you see the slogan, the phone that pays. You're intrigued. You're like, James, how does this even work? Come into the phone, there's 20 apps pre Only one of them is the Jumbo
No. Absolutely. I yeah. We'll I think we'll, double click on the kind of evolution into the mobile product in a minute. But just to give people a sense of where you guys are at, as I say, it's been, I think, 3 years since we first met, 3 and a bit. And, yeah, been super excited to see where you guys are at. Maybe you could give us a snapshot summary. Like, what are some of the, like, headline ecosystem growth numbers to give people a feel for where you guys are at?
Yes, sir. So we started it took us so we did our like, I think when I hopped on the pod last it was in 2022 towards our series a, right, when Paradigm led our series a in, like, q one. Basically, in these last two two and a half years, we've set up our supply chain for phones. We have 3 factories, you know, in Asia, that we can do large numbers without having supply chain issues, and we've opened distribution channels to over a 100 countries. Now some numbers, in 2024, we did over 7 100,000 units of jumbo phones sold to over a 128 to over a 100 countries. They're closer to 128, created 6,600,0
That's awesome. And I'll be sure to, to link the June dashboard as well with all the latest ecosystem stats because it's actually ticked up. I was having a look at it before this. It's, like, over 7 mil wallets now as well, which is cool to see. So, yeah, love love to see that expanding and kind of seems like it's starting to hit a bit of a escape velocity. So, yeah, maybe you could talk us through the journey of deciding to build the mobile product. Because when we first met, I didn't feel like this was as core to, like, the the idea. And now, like, obviously, choosing to tackle something lik
sir. So there's a reason. Right? Like, usual companies and also softwar
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