When it comes to changing the world, one entrepreneur is making strides with his revolutionary company.
This entrepreneur is Edrizio de la Cruz. He is the CEO and co-founder of Regalli, which is a technology that provides a new way for immigrants to support their loved ones back home. With Regalii, immigrants can send money for the most basic needs, such as electricity, water, gas, education and telephone – all this right from their mobile phone.
De La Cruz told RIZZARR he developed the idea for Regalii out of his own experiences. Having had a difficult childhood, De La Cruz developed the idea for Regalii out of his own experiences. “My grandmother used to tell me in Spanish, ‘No struggle, no progress.’”
WATCH NEWS STORY ON REGALII
When he was a teenager, De La Cruz says he and his family moved from the Dominican Republic to Harlem, New York. There, his mother started a cookware wholesale business with the goal of supporting her mother and sister back in the D.R. Meanwhile, De La Cruz attented Aviation high school, earning an FAA-Issued aircraft engineering technician (AET) license, and was awarded a full scholarship to college. But during his first semester of college, his mother’s business failed due to a lack of financial resources, and the family was forced to depend on welfare. Feeling overwhelmed by the need to help his family, De La Cruz decided to drop out of college and work two jobs to help make ends meet. Some of his earnings after he began his AET job at Swissair at age 18 were sent via costly Western Union and Moneygram to his grandmother and aunt in the Dominican Republic.
The work was dynamic and challenging, but also dangerous. After one scary incident at work, he says he decided to return to college, this time to pursue a finance degree, while working a full-time night shift at Swissair. Despite the rigor of the commute between work and school, he graduated with honors and received an offer in investment banking from J.P. Morgan.
After a few years on Wall Street, he found himself yearning to make an impact. To develop the right tools so that he could enter into entrepreneurship, he pursued his MBA at The Wharton School and later decided to develop Regalii. We at RIZZARR were so inspired by his story and the success of Regalii that we wanted to share it with you. We hope that it inspires you to realize that you can overcome any obstacle in the pursuit of fulfilling your dream.
RIZZARR INTERVIEW WITH EDRIZIO DE LA CRUZ
1. What is Regalii and why is it so unique?
1. What is Regalii and why is it so unique?
Regalii allows immigrants to use their mobile device to track and pay bills for family in Latin America. Users can visit www.regalii.com from any mobile device and link recurring bills – tuition, utility bills, and soon insurance and loan payments – and see live bill balances, due dates and receive reminders and savings tips – all at no charge. Users can also choose to set up automatic bill pay with Regalii, for a small flat fee of $2.99 for any bill amount. Users can also budget all of their family’s finances back home to reduce the risk of family members carrying large amounts of cash.
2.Why did you start your own company?
I have always wanted to start a company from the moment that I came to this country. I think everything that I did up until from starting a company was training to state a company. But it wasn’t until I got my MBA that I had the confidence to start it. And I took the leap. The second part was what to start. It was something that made a lot of sense to me, attracted business and I thought to do something that I know and something that was ingrained into our family culture the only reason you come here was to support your family over there. It really allowed me the lack of technology advancement going on in that industry. Every month my grandma would have to pick up cash and then go to another one to pay her bills. It seems like a manual process. It’s expensive for the person sending the money and can be dangerous for the people getting the money. It seems there must be an easier way of supporting my loved ones back.
3. What has your success been since launching?
We started with one country, the Dominican Republic, and now we are in five countries. We do thousands of transactions now and growing every month. We are always focusing on optimizing and replicating the product to the point where it become an alternative to transferring money. We are going to target Mexico next since it is about four times the size of the Dominican Republic. If we can replicate it there, then that I think we will be very successful and be able to take it to even more countries as well. We need to bring Regalii to other regions of the world so that people can use it there.
4. What are you hoping that people will take away from Regalii?
What we’re discovering is that people want a more intimate way to remain connected to family abroad online. Sending money and calling are activities usually done offline at the thousands of money transfer franchises. At Regalii we want to take those activities online, and make them more accessible and social. Our goal is to empower and enhance how Latinos in the U.S. and Spain interact socially and economically with family in Latin America. Ultimately, we want to be an economic bridge between nations that can uplift communities.
5.What message do you personally hope to emulate to our generation?
I hope I can inspire others. I feel like have a responsibility to succeed for other people who look like me or who have grown up in similar circumstances. They see a few successes [of minorities in technology], but we really need to see more of us succeeding in this field. That is all the human mind needs to see. And once they have that [in their minds] that is amazing. Once they can see that, then they will be attentive, optimistic. They will look for an excuse to move on and to move forward. But when you are in certain communities and you don’t have many successes, it’s hard. The question becomes, “Why aren’t there more African-American or Latino success stories in technology?” Until we have that first case, it will be very hard to have more success stories.
6. What advice would you give to anyone who trying to change or improve the world?
Know your one purpose in life and stay on it. Remember what you are doing all this for. Focus. Focus. Focus. Don’t multi-task. Remember the 80/20 principle and focus on things that make the biggest impact on achieving your goals, most other things are a waste of time. My purpose? I lift as I climb. Climb to the top, and lift others along the way. Take Responsibility. You are responsible for your thoughts and actions. Never whine, bitch or complain. Ever. That is just your perception of a situation and not the real situation it self. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it. Do what works and stop doing what doesn’t. Einstein once said “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If you have a clear focused goal, theneach action will either get you closer or further to your goal. simple. This has helped me not only at Regalii, but in my relationship with my cousins.
7. What advice would you give to anyone who is having a tough time on the pursuit of fulfilling their dreams?
Your dreams will always matter more to you than they do to anyone else- no one, not your parents, friends, even your co-founders will have more interest in fulfilling your dreams than you, and that’s the way it should be. So focus on doing everything that’s within your power.
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