5 Questions With XCredit Founder Nischay Madappa

(LOS ANGELES, Calif.) —  In a world where it seems like we have conjured every invention or idea, it’s hard to imagine that we haven’t even scratched the surface.  For 22-year-old Nischay Madappa, the flow of ideas seems to never yield. Madappa recently graduated from Loyola Marymount University, majoring in film production and finance.

About one year ago, Madappa created a bare-bones concept for XCredit. The idea? To make building credit more efficient, accessible, and free. Madappa and his growing team are continuing to work on XCredit to hopefully maintain the funding necessary to grow the company and formally launch the business. 

In a short interview, Madappa spoke with The Click about his business and how to stay positive when things aren’t going your way.  This interview was edited for clarity and length. 

The Click: Would you consider yourself an innovative person? 

Madappa: I would consider myself a creative type, I’m always willing to conjure new ideas. Life, in my eyes, is boring and stale if you always focus on a one-track mindset. We have a good 50 years before we start wearing down so you might as well try everything you can. I have the time and am young right now so why not try these things? Worst case it fails–I learned something new and move on.

What led you to come up with this idea? 

I realized there’s gotta be a better way to build credit. We realized the number of payments between friends and family should be counted towards your credit score. That led our way to creating a unique system that’s transparent and effective in building your credit score. XCredit is something you can see right away that won’t charge you an arm and a leg.

What is XCredit? 

Credit is a digital wallet app and peer-to-peer platform that allows users to build their credit score by fulfilling transactions on time. Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) and VantageScore don’t take into factors such as rent, recurring payments, and other types of bills. A good way to build your credit is through mortgages or house loans – the everyday person is not going to do that. Undergrads or immigrants are not going to get a mortgage right away; you don’t have enough data points to go off of. X-credit allows you to benefit from these smaller everyday transactions and gain credit points.

Do you feel discouraged at times while building a business? If so, what keeps you going?

Definitely yeah, I feel discouraged all the time. How long do we keep trying until you ultimately burn out? I know the industry I picked and the odds of success are pretty much zero to none. However, we keep trying and pivot whenever needed. If in a year I’m still having this conversation with you I think at that point I would put it down and say: The idea doesn’t work, I’m clearly not the person to run it or, luck is just not in my favor. I wouldn’t see this as a failure but a learning experience thus, I would move on to my next project.

What do you hope for the future of XCredit? 

For the near future it’s really up to us to get funding and build a team to bring this modular application to the market. It’s just really executing it with the overhead of the financial and technical obligations. For the long term future, it’s really helping people like us get loans, apr rates, and better credit. We are expected to take calculus and all these high-degree classes in college yet we don’t understand our own financial system so I think that’s the long-term goal.