Inspiring success story of MobiKwik

Imagine standing in a long queue at the grocery store and realising that you don’t have the exact change; or trying to make payment using your debit or credit card only for it to be declined due to poor network connectivity of the card machine or other issues. Cut to now when every payment can simply be done online! Have you ever thought about how it has become so simple? What kind of inventive imagination and vision did it take for some entrepreneurs to make things so easy for us?

If you have been using digital payments, there is not a chance that you haven’t heard of?MobiKwik. The company is India’s leading fintech platform operating businesses in consumer payments and financial services. The company has one of the largest user bases in the country including 300+ billers, 3 million merchants, and 120 million+ users!

But how did this unicorn come to be? How did a small-sized startup become this huge? All of this dates back to 2009 when an enterprising young entrepreneur Bipin Preet Singh along with an equally dynamic Upasana Taku and a team of young people came together with a vision for making recharge options and payments easier for people. Both Bipin and Upasana had decided to leave their safety nets of lucrative jobs and decided to plunge into the biggest personal and professional risk of their lives.

With 2 laptops, a dining table for an office, and all their personal savings, Bipin and Upasana went live with MobiKwik in 2009.

From a Digital Wallet to Pay Later

MobiKwik started by offering the initial services of a website with only a closed wallet facility. Remember, this was the time when not many people trusted technology, especially not with making payments digitally and the company had to struggle to convince users to register.

Over the years, the company extended its services to mobile apps by partnering with merchants, both in the online and offline space. Apart from regular payments for mobile recharges, electricity, DTH, broadband etc., online and offline shopping, etc. also emerged as important use cases for MobiKwik. By the year 2015, the company had increased its registered user base by many folds! Keeping in line with its super-successful growth trajectory that has primarily been an outcome of pre-empting the needs of the people and the markets, the company started providing small loans to its registered users.

Adding to this pride is the fact that an Indian woman is its co-founder.

Upasana broke many myths and stereotypes with her career choice.

• Staying away from home:?Upasana was born in Surat. She moved all the way to Jalandhar in Punjab to study engineering.?
• Studying industrial engineering: While many girls her age were busy pursuing more women-oriented courses, Upasana chose a male-dominated, technical field. She decided to pursue industrial engineering.
• She even went to the USA to complete her MS in Management Science and Engineering. That too from the very?prestigious Stanford University. Upasana was focused right from the beginning!
• Coming back to India:?In the US, Upasana worked on many important projects. These projects were worth millions of dollars.

Her family had reservations about Upasana giving up her comfortable life in the US. After all, she had a stable, successful career there. Upasana, however, wanted to come back to India. She wanted to contribute to?the?country.

• Establishing her own startup:?In India, Upasana met her future husband, Bipin Preet Singh. Together, they started MobiKwik. ?
• Leading finance and technology:??Upasana broke the stereotype that women find it challenging to handle FinTech (finance and technology). She was the one heading FinTech in MobiKwik. Even before starting MobiKwik, Upasana was successful in FinTech. She held key positions in international companies such as HSBC and PayPal.

Upasana has proven that girls can lead in finance and technology. And achieve success! In 2016, she was featured on the Forbes Asia “Women To Watch” list.

As a girl and a startup founder, Upasana had to face challenges too. But she did not let them affect her spirits…

When Upasana was managing finance at MobiKwik, she would often meet bankers, auditors, and investors. They were usually surprised to see a woman handling finance. Sometimes, they would even request that a male deal with them instead of Upasana.

Upasana did not let such biases affect her. She confidently handled finance as well as technology...

As a start-up founder, Upasana had to multi-task…

She was managing finance and hiring people. None of this was easy.?She had to find talented people. Then see if they fit with her company's expectations. And then convince them to join a new organization. All this was challenging. But Upasana was not someone who gives up.

Her motto was simple: Kick up a storm or die trying.?So, Upasana kept trying and managed it confidently.

Upasana was always focused and goal oriented. Once she decides something, she tries her level best to achieve it.

She once said, "Tenacity is key. When you start something new, the ecosystem doesn't accept you easily; people say no. It took us 10 months to get the first bank onboard for wallet loading, while the second one happened in 15 days. It took us 3-4 months to get our first few top merchants in 2014. Within 3-4 months we closed eBay, Domino's, and other large merchants. All because I held on tight.”

In fact, so dedicated were Upasana and Bipin to their startup that they even took work breaks during their wedding day!

Their hard work paid off! Today, Mobikwik is one of India’s leading fintech ventures!

In the next few years, MobiKwik went on to become a full-fledged fintech company. It began offering financial services like loans, insurance policies, and investment options and also allowed people to make bank transfers. It has now ventured into the space of mutual funds, completing the stack of financial services that it offers. As on today, the company envisions to provide?Digital Credit Cards?for Billion Indians through their Buy Now, Pay Later product called MobiKwik ZIP. This product lets users spend money now on their everyday transactions and settle the bill later.

Growing stronger, one partnership at a time

MobiKwik has grown by leaps and bounds both in terms of its availability, services offered, and partnerships. Its partnerships with a whole range of diverse companies have allowed Indians to not only become digitally savvy, independent, but also safeguard their finances and assets. Some of the brands MobiKwik has partnered with are: Bajaj Finance to build the ‘Bajaj Finserv Wallet’ app, Home Credit to launch the ‘Home Credit Money’ app, Google to help users search, compare, and recharge prepaid mobile plans and many more!

The story of how a company that originated in a single room in Delhi’s Dwarka has completely transformed the way Indians, who are known to be extremely risk-averse, is and will remain a very successful case study. The company not only has mobile-savvy millennial users but also older people who are now increasingly using MobiKwik for the ease of payments and the safety that it offers. The enterprising vision that it started with has kept pace with the government’s demonetization schemes and dramatically altered the payment habits of people.