Fintech in India is a very large opportunity: Upasana Taku, MobiKwiK

At e4m Pride of Brands: The Best of North Conference, Co-Founder, Chairperson and COO of MobiKwiK Upasana Taku shared the brand’s journey since its inception in 2009. In a fireside chat with Mona Jain, Chief Revenue Officer, ABP Network, Taku shared the experience of building a digital brand at a time when India was at a nascent stage of the digital revolution.

“Doing something new is always challenging because, by definition, if you are doing something which everybody else is doing and is the popular flavour, then it cannot be a startup and you will not be the only one doing it. So when we were getting started, I remember, my own family members were laughing at me saying how can India go cashless as this is a cash-based economy. This was 10-12 years ago. I told them that I felt there would be a digital revolution and I would like to give a few years of my life to that mission, and in a year or two, we would get to know if India is going to go in that direction or not or MobiKwiK is going to be a part of that revolution or not,”  shared Taku.

“I was aware how technology can simplify payments and bring simplicity into the daily lives of consumers and also businesses, whether a retailer or an e-commerce company. It was only bound to happen in time in India because our country was also developing. My co-founder had a view that China had a smartphone revolution in early 2000, and in India, it will happen in the 2010s. So that was our insight. India is operating on 99% cash, so it is not going to be 100% digital, but the country will move in the direction of becoming 80% or 70% cashless. People will stop standing in line to pay bills, people will want convenience. The smartphone will make entries in the market and so that's how we started humbly,” she added.

Talking about the journey further, she said, “In the initial years of the company, we had to bootstrap. It was my and my partner’s personal investments, and we don't come from well-to-do families, so we had limited savings from the five-six years that we had both worked. There was no money for marketing in the first few years. The idea was to make the product very innovative to catch and acquire users. Much before Flipkart and other apps, our mobile app was on Google Play Store. I remember we went from 3 lakh users in one and a half years to a million users within a span of a few months because the app was getting so many downloads from the Play Store. The idea is once the user has downloaded, the onboarding and experience of the user has to be so smooth and then they stick with you,” she added.

“By the time we were three years old, we had more than 3 million users and in our escrow account we had Rs 10 to 15 crore,” she mentioned.

When asked about the fintech revolution in India, Taku said, “Fintech in India is a very large opportunity. I am very happy to tell you that fintech, as a market, has become the third richest market in the world. In the last few years, besides many large-scale companies getting into it, India saw about 8000-9000 fintech startups.”

“This is a sector where we are taking leadership. As of 2022, India has processed the largest number of digital transactions as opposed to any other country in the world. From being a country which had 99% cash use, we have come a long way. The opportunity is still very large because from approximately 300 million people who carry  out digital transactions, the number of people who have access to credit is still just 60-70 million. Also, still only  25 million people are insured. So there are a lot of opportunities.”

While digital transactions are easy to perform, there is always a safety question in the user's mind. Talking about the safety aspect, Taku said, “In India, we have two types of platforms, one is wallet-based platforms, other is UPI-based platforms. In MobiKwik and our competitors, you will find both facilities in the same app. The reason why I say that you can trust platforms of scale is because all of us are regulated by the Reserve Bank of India. We have to get one licence from the RBI, one licence from SEBI, and one licence from IRDAI which is an insurance regulator. We are not as heavily regulated as banks are but we also have to do monthly and quarterly reports and annual in-person audits. It happens so the bar on compliance and corporate governance is extremely high.”

Talking about smaller cities becoming larger consumers, Taku said, “I think the next phase of the internet revolution in India, whether it is any type of company, is definitely coming from the smaller cities and towns of the country and even villages. So if we look at our user acquisition or transactions data in the last two or three years, almost 65% of the new users who have downloaded our app and are actively transacting, are not coming from metros; they are coming from smaller cities. We have reached 99% of pincode.”

Speaking about 2023, Taku expressed hope that it is going to be a good business year despite inflation. She said, “My personal view is that it is going to be a good year of growth. India is on a strong wicket with the way our economy is performing. After the first half of 2023, we will see a good comeback.”