MY OPERATOR FINAL PODCAST

Hi everyone uh welcome to another episode of EOD show today on the show we have a guest who has been working on upis but for business expenses let me explain this way we all have been using upis for our payments day-to-day life but these payments largely haveen we as a consumer we also as a businesses are accepting UPI payment but then when we want to make payment through businesses make expenses it's still not UPI have You noed what is that part why as a business owners or why as a business teams we can't make our

expenses happen through UPI yeah we we definitely can choose individuals to pay from their own UPI and then rebbur it but that's a cumbersome process being a business owner I realize all this pity cash issue is a really pity issue I don't want to deal with and that's what this founder has identified as a problem and has been Working on last many years he started with a different agenda but then you know he realized this is a much bigger potential to build it he's betting on India's UPI story and that's how he defines it that

the UPI India story is much bigger than the India story itself and that's what we have seen as a growth in last many years happening now at one point UPI has changed lot of things this area of business expenses it yet to be explored and I as a business owner am Able to understand how much easier this is going to to make my life and if you are a business owner yourself I think this is why you should listen to this entire podcast apart from learning on his own Journey apart from understanding how to build

startups how he has found out this problem you know different aspect of his journey more importantly why you should use a UPI based expense management I think you know I'm not endorsing his his or not advertising his His product right now that he'll be doing himself but I think the whole conversation is very intriguing here because this is where I realize there's a such an untabbed potential which is about to be exploded and let's further continue let's let's have VI joining us today on the show hey VI uh welcome on the show would love to

hear about cashbook I'm so excited today thank you thank you I think you defined it very aptly it's almost a perfect Introduction for the product cashbook UPA ah yeah because I've been a business owner myself and I understand you know what you're trying to build but you know today I I actually called you here to re explain you know everything that you've talked to me earlier and you know help our audience understand what you're trying to do how especially the UPI is going to change the business expense side of it it's definitely a Pity cash

issue but you know that's a Pity issue I Never want to deal with I agree with you I agree with you let's start VI tell me what is cashbook cashbook is UPI expense management mhm for business owners so take a very simple example I'm sure you use UPI mhm how how does UPI work you go on Google pay and paid yes but UPI works one person one account one phone number so you use UPI from your personal or Savings bank account now think you are a business owner right you which you are so it's a

private limited you have you Will have at least two director and you will say have you have 10 employees yeah 200 employees so now how will you link this2 number to one current account business account you cannot yeah there's there's no way it does not work so we are we enable that so we allow you to issue wallets from your current account so that your staff can do then expense interesting but you know how does it how does it really help I mean I understood the concept but why as a business own I Would want

it so this product already exists right like an expense management Suite already exist MH it has been there across right like you have bricks and ramp these are big expense management companies companies give you corporate card to do expense wherever you are traveling all those kind of expense you can do using this card but now coming to India right India is no more a card economy right like India does not works on card India works on UPI if you look At upi's number it dwarves the number absolutely of whatever is of credit card or debit

card or expense card any card so in that sense UPI is the fundamental thing on which anyone does expense in India now if you are a company you can give card but if you are a big company Enterprise sort of a company it makes sense for you because your employees will go to a hotel we'll book a Ola Uber but if you think of smbs their employees will eat in a Dhaba uh they will take a Bus and in those places UPI is the only thing which works to do the expense so for company to

track the expenses of employee and ensure that this is getting done in a very comfortable fashion without the hassle of reimbursement sending money to his personal account giving him cash in place of uh uh any other means so there UPI is good H interesting I like the idea but you know as an entrepreneur why do you think this is Important basically I ran a restaurant and also a la there also I felt like lot of your daily expenses right like uh so if you're in a restaurant business you will have procurement on a daily basis

sub so all those things you do payment right like you either the Mundy guy comes and gives it to you most likely in restaurant is the fixed vendor so we come and give it to you like all utensiles disposables and lot of things right so there the expense is a Consistent thing which is going out now you can do it in a check fashion you can have some advances you will give him in a end of month and things like that but you are not always there to do it at times your staff is there

in the store and he will take the delivery and do the payment so there this makes a lot of sense like it's an anomaly that in India the UPI does not work with a current account right like a product which has 20 lakh CR per month value 20 lakh CR Per month value M their B2B part is 0.7% of UPS entire value it is 0.7% because lot of soul prop use it for 1% One account that is why that 0 7% is also coming so it should be there it's like a no-brainer that it should

be there interesting the UPI architecture has been built like that but uh now it's slowly coming uh with the one of the first company to launch it I think there will be more companies technically you need lot of laying for this you need a PPI license for this uh you need lot of layering to execute this that's why it takes time to execute it and how big you think is the market so look at any economy right like one of the good way of looking at it is you look at GDP of any economy so

uh say India is a 3 trillion economy 3x that size is the B2B transaction of that economy uh so 3 trillion India to you will say 9 trillion is the size of I'm taking the example of us right like this Is what the numbers in US says I'm just drilling it down to India TOA 3x is your uh basically the B2B transaction now 3x because B2B has lot of layers right suppliers then uh Factory then X and Y so all those transactions compound usually comes to 3x 10% of that is usually the expense the petty

expense so you will say 900 billion should be uh the transaction value which you can achieve over here interesting it should be more than b2c should be Definitely more than b2c the Consumer up should be at least 2 3x of that but why nobody else has been doing it so far change huh that that was the question with which we also started this right like that was the thing which I wanted back in 2018 right like this is long back in 2018 we wanted and then we started so because we didn't knew Financial Services very

well we started the record keeping part of it right like owners can just you know input cash they Have given to their staff and then whatever expense staff is doing he will keep adding there so that owner can Tate that's where the cashbook journey started and we've been wondering same but uh yeah there's a need for this product in the market uh we have clear understanding of that from our own user base M why no one has done that do will have to ask other people should be done uh I thought for a while is

there a policy limitation that stopped anybody Doing it or uh is it a new technology that came npci is also doing something in this direction they have been coming up with UPI circles and things like that uh why no one has done it I think a lot more entire fintech funding and everything everyone was focused towards consumer consumer is that shiny thing which actually yeah so everyone was focused there but I feel that now a lot of companies should start looking into this direction and uh You know by name it sounds very similar to katab

book any coincidence or any you know reason it sounds similar no kabuk has done great branding and that's why I think everyone in Industry associate us somewhere close to that it's okay but if you look at genuinely right like cashbook has more organic suches than kab book cashbook is a much better keyword than katab book and cashbook is the keyword which you use for petty cash so so it made absolute sense for us to Go with the name cash book and because of that we have lot of organic downloads We have lot of organic downloads

compared to a lot of other players interesting cashbook is that like it's not a Hindi and English word combination it's that word which everyone uses it's not Kata plus book it's not pagar plus book or any X plus book it's the word right like cashbook you look at Google Trends today open the word cashbook look at the volume of cashbook and look at The volume of Kata book or any other books cash will DWF any other when it comes to that's a smart way of put it totally and uh uh what's the scale right now

you know uh how many business are using it uh what do you see for the future so cashbook has more than 50 lakh downloads wow and uh so businesses business owners are primarily SM owners are using it uh to track expense of their employees not the UPI piece UPI piece has been launched last month uh so There we have now around 300 businesses using it it is now coming out of the testing just in a month just in a month we we had 50,000 users in weight list a so it's right now the testing phase

of it which is going on got it uh towards the end of this month we'll open it for all the users got it and what are you seeing you know what kind of numbers you expecting in a year so I don't have like a large number sort of expectation I just looking to become profitable with The product quickly that is the most important thing uh number wise uh if we achieve 10,000 businesses uh that itself will be a great number so 10,000 businesses in next 3 to 4 months that'll be awesome amazing so you spoke

bit about you know what we doing it uh before before it but I I still want to know you know uh much of a journey you know where do you come from how do you start this what made you think in this direction a bit of your history so did My MBA from I indor was part of 5e program there 3 years BBA 2 years MBA had absolute blast in my college enjoyed my time in my college uh while I was in college also got involved in running few few businesses one of those was laundromat

helped a friend scale lrat from am indor to I indor and then that business got scaled to multiple campuses like 15 16 campuses across India also ran a restaurant in campus for 2 years so that Experience so that was a formative AG also did an internship in OU I remember in 2015 yeah back in 2015 so that was another formative experience towards going ahead and doing a startup so was back then only in three cities I think I was that Delhi NC only NOA Gul and Delhi that three City oo was there I think I

was one of the first intern there that was a formative experience to move toward startup then post College decided To work for a year product management was a sigy thing uh 2017 not a lot of people were doing product management but uh product management was a big thing in us so uh did product management for a year uh then took a year off chill around because a lot of my friends were now working so I had place to crash in Bangalore everywhere so did that CH for a year and then uh 2019 started this the

initial idea was to help small businesses sell online uh something like Dukkan and Bai we doing very quickly realized that that won't work uh because people need end to end experience right like there are two set of people one consumer wants to go down and buy from the grocery shop and there is another set of consumer who is willing to pay but he wants end to end experience and local Mom and Pop Shop is never willing to give that experience so can go on a separate rant about how kirana guys are a Dying Breed and

how zepto and blinket Coming in is a great thing for Consumer experience point of view at least right like very contrarian to a lot of what lot of people says but uh yeah zepto and blinket guy can only give you that experience uh then so did that uh then got into YC so why combinator was a great experience from there we were able to raise some funds and then cash books Journey has been there had some problem with uh the product from the regulation side of it and those ups and downs and Then finally we

have released the happy to release the product then interesting this is like one of the thing which we used to say in the company that thing has happened so happy about that sure tell me about YC you know I think a lot of people would want to know about YC uh I know a lot of lot of folks you know has U gone through YC Journeys Etc what is it uh who should apply for it you know what are you what do you expect out of it what is what did You really get out of

it I think most of the things which I got from YC are prey so YC has this fabulous uh video by so YC is YC is an incubator huh basically it select some 100 startups in a year uh in a batch and then uh after 3 months uh it will there's a demo day you can raise money from investors uh but that's not the main part of YC I think I started reading YC and Paul blogs back in 2016 2015 sort of a time Frame I will say still that's the absolute Gem of YC which

is still outside for anyone and everyone to go ahead and read it I think there was a lecture by Sam Alman this 20 videos lecture he is how to start a startup that was also I don't remember that was also phenomenal so lot of ices uh material if you have to say it are available freely on web uh it's absolute gem if you want to to start a startup absolutely and for someone Starting first time I think you should definitely go and read that maybe over time you will develop some contrarian idea to what YC

is saying but that comes over time right like initially those are absolute best piece of advises for you to follow absolutely and how how do people for audience to understand how do people apply for YC what it takes to get into y yeah so it's a very simple form it's a form you fill that form up uh you do the application and they will ask you For if you get selected you will have an interview once you do the interview round they will fun you how much why combinator invest in a business typically so now

I think they're investing 500k I'm not super updated with what Y is doing now but but I think now they are investing 500k and are you connected with folks you know who who has been YC batch earlier or later uh is it a community in Bangalore even uh yeah largely it's a great Community I have Personally not uh met a lot of folks in last one one and years but it's a great Community still the YC WhatsApp group is very active if you need any advice or help it's one of the first place you go

and ask for it uh yeah like one of the startup from my batch is zepto I think everyone knows zepto now they have done an absolutely brilliant work uh so it's a great place like yeah absolutely I think you know most of the uh Tech side of the Entrepreneurs you know know about YC it's like place people want to start with yes met a lot of people and one interesting all the people who has been part of YC take a real pride in you know mentioning that or stating that the whole journey about YC Etc

I think that's that's a sign of a good Community because you know once you have that you know pride in it that you know I'm part of YC it shows a great community in YC is absolutely yeah yeah it's one of the Best incubator you will ever get got it let's talk about upis yeah because you're you're working very close uh with the whole ecosystem might be on the business side of it but U uh I think you know looking at last few years with respect to payments dzel payments I think you know upis has

been one of the the milestone for India you know it changed the way how India pay and something you know even I love to flaunt around with friends who come from you Know us or west in India and show around look you know this is how we scan you know uh India don't tap or something India scan yeah and uh uh but the growth has been there but what's now with UPI what are you seeing uh uh upi's future or what is happening in UPI or payment side of it so in my view the experience

of payment now in Western countries are catching up and is becoming much much much better like once you use your Apple watch to pay in subve just tap and pay And move out you will realize how seamless that experience is so I wouldn't say like like 5 years back I'll say India re Supreme in digital payments uh but not today right like not today we still great but uh PX has came in Brazil so this mobile first networks across world has came in so those are great the next set of innovation which is happening in

the digital payment side of it is basically happening in usdt so it's a digital USD like you have digital Rupee coming in K recently announced a uh pilot about digital rupee it's doing with yes bank and so yes Bank maybe the sponsor bank and credit is doing it RBI is also monitary that so digital rupee is one of the great Innovation which will come in I'm looking forward to it I've used digital rupee for multiple Banks but in the bank UI it's not great so I think red coming in will do much better job over

there uh so that's one great Innovation which might come in Other than that I think UPI is pretty much you know growing every month UPI side of it there two new I think there's one new thing which has came out is like credit card on UPI so that's another thing which rupe credit cards can now be linked to uh your UPI account and you can scan and pay using credit so that's another thing which is happening a friend of mine very good friend of mine anop is doing that um that is with kiwi that's a

credit Card on UPI app so that's another product which is in the market interesting interesting and what do you see for businesses happening you know because you're working close one part is you're you know creating a layer which helps them manage it entirely what else what what do you see happening on the business side because if I if I look you know the UPI impact I can see it as a consumer a significant change but as a business owner I often see we still are Managing it the very similar way I think most of my

even company's payment happen through cards only yes because you are an Enterprise company right like you are a large company your employes don't really go out you will find cases of UPI you will find use cases of UPI once you start using it inside your company I can in fact activate it right now M but I'll need your business kyc and things like that but uh it's a very simple it takes less than 5 minutes to complete It uh why so the impact of up on business I'll say more than from the expense side it

has been from the acquiring or getting the payment side right like if you look at the acquiring side like think of yourself as a restaurant right like earlier you were getting all your payments from the consumer in cash you very happy with the payment you are getting in cash and you are very happy to spend it also in cash because the whole thing the money comes In the money goes out it never goes in the book right like the how the India Works uh but I think the other impact which has happened which is significant

is that now the money coming is also in digital so there's a trackability of that money and that you have got that money digitally so you are also willing to spend it digitally so that side is very important like that I'll say from the lens that has changed a lot like lot of like no in India can Now function Without keeping a QR code uh in front of their desk right like that's absolutely not possible in India anymore like few you you can take nitpick and take some examples of you know some ex Merchant in

y City or uh but it's not coming everywhere right now that you're requiring is also digital right you're getting the money digitally you want to spend it digitally right like now that it's in your book it has came through digital means so that that I feel is a Bigger impact which a lot of people Miss which is happening in the segment I often have spoken to a lot of uh smes and I see a you know lot of lack of trust uh for the staff members yes uh if you're talking about you know letting staff

make payment through digital systems one way it's fine you know at least I'm able to manage it digitally but the other way is I'm letting my staff pay I'm 100% on board with you right like any owner me being an owner You have distrust of uh from your staff side right that's why you look at lot of business these are family run businesses right like you have X brother white brother combinely doing the business and things like that right and that's where they get family members also because then that family members has that element of

trust but that being said like you cannot solve trust always from the family member lens right like yeah yeah so what we essentially do is that You know you don't need see even if they are like taking an example you have 202 employees I link all the 2002 employees to your current account you will get uncomfortable yeah so you send money to employee X in his wallet okay so you only send him 2,000 rupes okay and then you have additional control over it like anytime you do a transaction above 200 rupes uh you cannot do

a transaction above 100 rupees X Out of Control you will have to Attach invoice with each transaction uh what else you can get GPS location of the employee from where he has done transaction so think of it more or less like a camera analogy once you have camera set up the behavior of people is different than camera not having there so it makes sense absolutely to like if you give him in cash the trackability traceability what expense he has done that is gone that's the first part of it the second part of It look at

from it from the reimbursement lens so I'll tell you the problem like you have to look at the problem from multiple lenses one lens is the trackability of it right like you are not comfortable giving the money cash to him and then you know getting some receipts from him which can be of any XYZ amount in first so that thing gets solved over there so you have a clear trackability he has paid to Merchant ta he has attached the invoice He has paid it from the location or whatever like you have lot of uh you

want for any transaction above X size you want him to take permission from you can do that right like whatever so one that part is done second part of it look at it from the reimbursement hassle I'm sure at the end of the year you do a everyone every one of your employees file the reimbursement of whatever expense they are doing you do expense from card you then keep the receipt with You at the end of the month company HR comes or the accountant of the company comes and bugs you that give all the receipts

where are all the receipts of the payment you have done right that becomes an hassle here you do the payment using the camera and then using the same camera you just C capture the receipt image everything is done and sorted so for employees who want to do it in a sorted fashion this works like a champ Now look for distributed teams so Think of a construction he has five sites each site site manager is doing some work yeah now this site manager needs to travel some 40 km come to the head office to take cash

or whatever form of passion so there is a long traveling also which happens right like we solve that also you can instant yeah it's an in instant you can send him the money well still large payments and large procurement happen through central office but now what we are seeing is lot Of small payments are also happening at the site so I'm sure you have now noticed this behavior on your personal UPI only right so now you must have started giving like say if you want to pay your friend at 30,000 rupees you're not going to

open your bank account and do nft to him for 30,000 rupes you're just going to do UPI to him absolutely so UPI starts as a pretty cash like 102 rupes 100 rupees Samosa payment X payment y payment but it slowly starts Growing into that one L like AB 20 30,000 rupes what we have started seeing some vendor payments also started happening from this channel that's a very interesting development and obviously it follows the rule which has been in the consumer side of it got it it's very interesting because now when you say this I can

I can uh understand and I can realize the importance of it because it no longer giving me better control over the spendings it also is Giving me better visibility uh around it you know with cash it was just I've given and you know whatever answer I've got or whatever uh invoice maybe you know I've got I have to rely upon it but now with more data maybe it's more accountable yes and hence this might actually open up more trust between SMB owners and staff members respect to spending the trust is one layer of it like

I tell you right like so for folks who are using five six wallets in our Applications they are looking at it mostly from the trust lens but for folks who start using say 15 or 20 wallets out of a range for them convenience they don't want their staff to bug that you have to do payment to him you do the payment at the end of the day I'll do a uh calculation of it I'll have a view of it right so for them the convenience trumps everything like I don't want to be bothered about that

200 rupes payment you have done I just just log it from The system do it from the system I just don't want to be bothered about it so lot of owners think from that lens right like now that I have given you a wallet do all the expense from this but at the end see you know even there that trust is the main factor which is leading to this convenience people want convenience but people especially with money won't be able to really switch to convenience till the time they have a strong trust because your layer

is fundamentally Adding trust yeah fundamentally that's a trust layer and once you have a trust layer then you are able to do and things so on top of it convenience come naturally yeah is that you're spending from the system that is the important thing right like that that that is an important part it it has got better accountability has got you know even even towards the month end and I'm I'm trying to imagine you know as a system uh if if I have to really do an audit or Really do a uh quick check you

know how much money on what kind of things um do you also do these analytics no for you you are not aware of this right like because you are a large company you are not aware of all this but for your accountant of the company if you take this product to him he's like I need this how we we do analytics on this right like we can tell you so whenever you do payments anywhere like you get this MCC code which is the merchant code Which tells you that if this payment has been on petrol

pump or this payment has been on a restaurant FNB segment so those analytics we get automatically and we show it to our users like where the payment has been done so those categorization are there which is essential right like lot of people now that you know we have started looking at folks asking us for 100 wallet plus they have also started us for asking for budgeting so they're like my petrol cost For this month is 50,000 Rupees uh from this site I want to just allocate this 50,000 rupes for this budget and he can spend

only from that so those kind of special requests are also coming in interesting I will look into that but why only SMB this is like I think you know when I speaking about it I can see this is required for all sizes of business I 100% agree with you right like this UPI being the core way in which India does the payment this will Be required for all size of business essential initial focus in an side because uh it's easier to onboard them they have a complete completely self- sered model uh they can do their

kyc business kyc and then individual kycs and all those things completely online uh we don't uh need to get too involved in the process uh essential initial set of features are also available for them to find great use of it and also because cashbook has a very big base so we will First get it to I think SM move fast there's another good Advantage with them the decision making process you know you can make a decision in a day time like unlike Enterprise and other places you can make decision in a day time so that

also helps so initially we want to CER to SMS I think there's big enough market in itself uh over time we might look into expanding to Enterprise side as well interesting when I say I mean so we can very easily get it to 100 wallets Right when I say I mean I don't mean uh your local M and Pop shop and other places like I mean manufacturing I mean construction I mean education I mean Healthcare so a lot of people in India think SM is only kirana guys that's that's the segment we have never and

we never want to serve that segment so kirana is not like local Mom and Pop Shop guys are not my target audience sure but can do you think there can be a s serve version where you know even this Local Mom Pop Shop can use it yes but they don't have any use case of it if the owner of the business is sitting in one location the still they might have one or two staff maybe just but then those staffs are also in the same location now the owner itself sits on the cter throughout the

day the staff also is like there's no use case in uh M and Pop Shop what are you seeing uh now you know further building how are you looking forward to build it further so Essentially the idea is to curve uh you know give it to our own base till March uh the base which has been using cashbook for a while and from there we'll scale it uh then we'll open it to all new users now also we are you know if some new users is coming and putting in request that they want this feature

we talk to them and see if they want to use the product and we give it to them a post March will get into marketing and advertisement of it like right now we Are pretty comfortable so serving our base how how is this business from a regulatory perspective uh it's 100% regulatory compliant that is one of our important learning that you have to be always regulatory compliant I might not on board you as a business if your documents is missing uh but uh I'll ensure that uh the business stays regulatory complaint right like and that's

I will do kyc of each and every staff so each and every person in your Business if he is uh uh getting onboarded on the wallet we'll do a video call kyc where he needs to S his pan card so that kyc process is also taken care of so regulatory side my view has always been to stay super regulatory compliant uh because it in a way if you are losing one or two Customer because of you know uh tight Regulatory Compliance which you're following that's great like like it's okay because then you have obligation to

thousands of Customers you have already onboarded and because of any small mismatch or uh mishaps over there right like you don't want these thousand customers to suffer so you yeah like as a business it's your responsibility to be regulatory compliant and that's that's a reason why I'm asking this question because I think after PM a lot of people even consumers or business owner have this kind of scare that you know there are a lot of Regulatory thing and you know even a company like PTM might lose license or Banks uh how is the space really

shaping up though what's your take on what happened with PTM I have no idea what happened with PTM I like the product I have from personal UPI perspective I have always been a PTM user mhm uh post that Fiasco I think I have shifted what do you use now I use multiple apps now mostly I use cash book so I moved for individual Payment as well yeah yeah like lot of my payments are company payments only like if I'm booking a cap that's going for a meeting then it's on company right so that helps me

in that fashion obviously a lot of my expense has moved to cashbook also I keep testing the product so that's another reason I use cashbook extensively uh so cashbook is first m then I use couple of CC on UPI product uh I like paying from my credit only for UPI expense and then finally I use Jupiter so Jupiter is a new age digital bank so Jupiter has become more or less my secondary bank account where I park some little money there and then I do payment from there see you know VI you spoke about a

lot of things but I think um what we heading towards now and I think no talk is complete without talking about the AI uh there's a I think the the biggest buzz word in the tech right now is the whole wayi you know every day there is new models new Technology yeah deeps and what not and even Chinese have taken a leap there oh they're good they're actually good uh uh definitely uh uh but that that was like a sort of uh you know uh it was believed and Sam Alman even mentioned that you know

it's pointless to look for any training the fun foundational model Etc but then deep seek came and everybody started posting his uh remarks again that look you know uh how how the space is changing but in Your space you know which is largely payments and you know uh transactions Etc how do you see this AI helping or if it's helping anyway so AI will remain a horizontal use case in this segment I don't think AI fundamentally will change how the payment works I have no idea around that I have not seen so what most companies

will do that they will take care of customer service better using lot of this artificial intelligence uh gbt Models so that is one use case which see so product development will become faster because lot of frontend devs will now uh use chat G to generate code so that becomes another thing I don't see any industry specific thing happening with AI in financial services yeah I think the pace of innovation and like for a new company to launch large products will become easier right like if you have to write a comprehensive SAS today you can maybe

do it with a team of 10 people over 6 months M uh but rather than writing a comprehensive SAS product like say 5 years back it would have taken you 100 people and like maybe 2 years so that pace of development will be but that's the factor which every industry will face which every digital serving industry will face so that's the thing with I don't see but would be interesting if anything particular happens with AI and so data sorting all those things Will become much easier visualization of data will become easier so like I think

day-to-day operations of the company but nothing from the product standpoint but surely is not going to solve the compliance problem that's still going to the same still going to the same so I I like so basically in financial services lot of these models have not been approved so I'm not sure about India but in us uh credit right like the way you decide to Do uh lending to anyone you cannot use AI over there you cannot just feed computer the data and say because then AI will come up with some discrimination AI has known that

this particular name like if you're feeding the model and then you feeding the initial and the result and the model needs to make the algorithm in the middle like what is the best way for me to do lending so that my uh npas are less right like uh if I have to talk in layment term my so if I'm Doing the lending what is the best way to do uh lending so that uh I get most recover my money and get the interest as well right so now two models you are you know feeding the

initial set of customer profiles and you're also saying that you know these customers have been able to pay me back so now ai will make make its own judgment right that can be on the basis of ethnicity that can be on the basis of religion x y z and you don't know so that's like a black box so this Has been already been rejected in us long back not before like way before this generative Ai and other things came in so a lot of these AI things don't actually translate because they have this discrimination and

financial services discrimination is much more appalling than any other discrimination because then you don't get access to that credit you need like a discrimination in Social sense and you know AI doing discrimination you know Saying more about India bad things about India or things it's like a social thing right like it's largely but Financial Services you can't do that so that's where Regulators has been pretty but even in India not sure about India but I think there should be something like that we don't do lending so I'm not super aware of what lending practices we

follow in India but I think there should be something like that and you know talking about lending uh what I have Understood that every fintech company you know eventually want to be a lending partner that is that the direction that you even see for the business so it'll be shaping up in the payment Journey itself so we had lot of this uh Temptation right like why don't you start invoicing invoicing is a great use case why don't you start doing lending lending is a great use case why don't you enable P2P players to raise money

from here that's a great use Case we have always stopped that Temptation because we felt the product the problem we are solving itself is such a big problem that why don't we don't need to get bifurcated and and start doing multiple other things want to stay very focused on our product we see there is a potential of this product in the market and if we are not till 20 30% of that potential there is no point releasing any other product like we have stayed true to the product to the Features for which we have started

the company so VI you know you're building for smbs which India you know I've seen lot of startups and entrepreneur have had this LoveHate relation with SMB it looks like a big Market but at the same time it's very tough to crack and you talk to uh you go and talk to any investor today they might show this as a sign that why you building for SMB build for Enterprises that's where the money is smbs don't pay they you have Collection problems and all sort of things you would have what's your take on it and

why you still want to build for SMB I think lot of investors are absolutely right only uh it's very hard to take get money from uh but when I say I'm I don't say SMB I sayme right like I don't go to small and medium businesses small and medium Enterprises right like that's my take on uh this how do you define it you know the in terms of so it's a very clearly Like it's I Define it as per government Defenders micro medium and large uh small micro medium so exactly as per the government definition

of turnovers that's my exact definition and if you in a colloquial term if you want to know it then smbs are more like your local shops right like I will classify SMB in that direction the kirana guys the local washerman those are more or less like SMB so SMB has less been our Target and has been more our Target where you have At least three four branches like so uh yeah so couple of things coming back to your questions right like when you said ke it's very hard for smmes to pay and things like that

I see a lot of startups building for and but I see they hinged to India growth story which is eventually going to come eventually we going to be a 5 trillion economy you see all large consumer brands in us also being built after the GDP per capita went beyond 10,000 USD I think India is Because India is in multiple tiers Tier 1 tier 2 India a India B India C which lot of people talk about we'll see lot of large Brands being built even if India reaches $5 trillion economy right that's where lot of this

will also start paying so you just have to wait you have to let the India growth Story come and then with that lot of these invoicing app X app y app which are pure SAS payment will also arrive right like I think they should be doing revenue of Like 50 CR right now in the if they keep doing the same thing they should be doing revenue of 200 CR in next 5 to six years right like so that part I feel pretty sorted with right uh for us we are not on India growth story we

are on the growth story which has already happened in the market which is UPI so UPI grow story has I don't play the India growth Story game right I'm playing the UPI growth Story game UPI has already happened in the market and The largest I think one of the large use case of UPI has been neglected which is the B2B UPI like UPI expense management right so there I'm playing so I see the adoption is not being a challenge because people are so aware of UPI and how does UPI work so I don't see large

challenge over here uh outside of the onboarding challenges where we do a very stringent and uh to the letter kyc business kyc or individual kyc right outside of that I don't see large Challenge in things like that interesting but you said you know you're bitting on the UPI growth story not the India growth Story how is it too different so UPI growth story is a anomaly in India right like a nation with uh 2,700 GDP per capita doing large worth of its transaction digitally on UPI so that growth story is something which is like which

one of the best thing which has happened to India right that growth story has played out that Has been an insane success that gave hope lot of investors XYZ International investors that India might keep doing these kind of things which sadly we have not been able to do replicate after UPI so that has played out right like that's a great thing right I don't see any other country doing this kind of addal payment volume at this low GDP per capita so post UPI a lot of other countries have launched their own mob first Network right

like P like I was Talking PX in Brazil has also done phenomenally well so this is now pretty much a standard every country has its own mobile first Network now also because of Russia Ukraine war people Trust on International networks like MasterCard and Visa has gone down so people want to yeah every country wants to have their local network interesting and what all countries Beyond India you know have implemented something you know which is inspir UPI every country UPI no Apart from India which is implementing UPI yeah no country will imp Implement UPI UPI is

a local system huh but there something inspired from UPI huh so Brazil has pix Russia has SBN uh I think Indonesia also has one uh Singapore has pay now so every country has one or other form of something like that mobile first Network their own network got it so visa and MasterCard are like a Global Network which works across countries is there now every country is trying to Build their own network so South Korea also I think has their own network every country is now coming up with their own network because then having control over

your own payment network is having control over your own sovereignity right like even if tomorrow any big Network pulls out of India I think we are okay yeah we don't have any problem so do you think you know this can be expanded to multiple geographies if they have similar local homegrown networks we can Connectivity sort of a thing I think there's already a project which is going on uh something like project Nexus or something which government is doing so I think it's getting connected to those networks but I never see UPI becoming a def facto

Network in any country maybe we can give a white level product I think that's also a step NPC is taking and working hard towards that but I don't see like in my understanding I don't Think any country will adopt it the UPI as a network right like interesting it's not run by like NPC at the end of the day is like an extended arm of the government right like it's not a Visa or a MasterCard which is a private player running the show that I think is another layer of challenge there so you have been

serving SM for now how many years uh more than 10 years what are some unique Insight on SM H see one uh it's definitely tough to generate revenue From SMB they don't pay for tools uh you don't expect SMB to be um you know diligent enough to implement tools themselves they have their focus on the core business they are not able to these are like the payment side of it like I behavioral aspect what changes you saying what changes what changes or what what's happening in the SM right like the behavior aspect inside of it

so payment we all know that I'm not talking about payments in fact I was talking About the digital adoption part of it you know how are they adopting digital and Etc see you know one of the philosophy which I've been saying now uh that when softwares in general you know the softwares came you know the very early phase of softwares which was pre-2000 office those were adopted by Enterprise only gradually when s SAS came the the whole software thing trickled down to or digitization trickled down to smes you know smes I Would say that the

one you talking about the mature but now with AI this whole digital interfaces or digital system will trickle down to smallest of businesses now why does this matter because this is going to be the biggest driver in Behavior change right now as we see or probably you you mentioned about you know businesses using UPI or the way UPI helped everybody adopted I think AI is going to help everybody adopt digital system for each and Everything what I mean is the amount of digital penetration that we see right now would be significantly higher in next 5

years of time it's just because of AI okay so two things there like one thing first thing which is a comment so what I have realized second gen people entering smes are the best people to Target so if an so we have one of the business owner who's been running business in chandigar for logistic site for a long while right now this guy has Been using his accountant has been using some form of cash book m for whatever trucker are doing expense and things like that interesting and uh we reached out to him for the

up I think because he's one of the large users in our base right he's like sir yes and uh to few months back we got a call from the same business and this time the son has taken over the business and he just does not want to haggle about this 200 rupes 500 rupes and Whatever is happening and he wants to adopt it right like so he was one of our first users and he also gave us a lot of advice on terms of feature what we need to implement and things like that so that's

a like for me if Facebook can tell me right this is a second gen entrepreneur entering the business I will put all my money to Target that user that that like you don't have that parameter the problem is that you don't have that parameter so that's a great uh Place to see I think it's not just about second generation you know my hypothesis on this and because I've seen in last 10 years and this has been constantly evolving the you know whenever Next Generation or the newer person person whenever a younger person you know comes

uh into a business he has he has been digital first he has been using all this and that's how you want to operate in business so whenever then you know a newer person be it you know first Generation be it second generation a new age person comes into the way he operate business very different from the way the previous generation he looks into efficiency very differently and you know lot of aspirations or lot of control the way people see control see smbs has been you know very much around control the general Behavior the traditional Behavior

has been very much under they want to control each and every bit yes but as the newer generation is coming They are understanding control in a very different way they are understanding more from accountability perspective they're changing systems or using more systems in fact to bring in those things rather than have a you know very footo control on everything that that's largely so I won't name names but uh I know a large Bank retired large Bank CEO but uh he used to look for every loan which has gone beyond cor so if you're looking like

the control level is needed At all sort of businesses right so yeah so also I see feel you know it's lot more easier to Target businesses who are aspirational business owners who are aspirational absolutely AB strong correlation there that's my only Mojo right like so in local terms we say lot of businesses are you know guy who has a poultry farm has also opened a hotel yeah and those are the best set of people to Target in the market right they want to use the product they want To understand everything they have so yeah that

is see one way now we actually use that so when we launch my Opera even like 10 years back so a lot of people were suggesting us to go offline have a feet on Street Etc and we never did that what we realize and strongly believed on it that people who are coming online are more Tex heavy and those people would be easier for us to convert serve and you know grow as compared to people who doesn't come online we have to go on Feed and sell them these products and eventually expect them to grow

it doesn't happen right correlation very weak there yes but uh still a large part of India selling is happening like that yeah but we decided we took this call that maybe next 5 years 10 years it won't be required but right now also lot of large selling and exactly so I understand there's a market but would you be able to capture that market efficiently is a question so we were Asking more of a efficiency question rather than the whole outcome question yes yes yes so I think tally is a great example of that right like

has partnered tally Partners across India yeah and it has been ingrained and these tally partners then do the selling and then they take care of the customer service they take care of everything and then you have a local guy with whom uh you know you can go and talk and your accountant can go and talk and that also Has some sort of a trust which we say that you have a local guy who is doing the selling to you yeah so T in that sense is a great example but you know definitely that's how India

has been doing businesses but again you know as you said you know as more and more new Next Generation or newer people entering into it's changing very very rapidly yes and something I always said what do you want to build it for at the end you have to Define your audience very well I Don't end up you know end up creating something which I want to sell to both both the generations I want to create for very defined generation my thing is you know somebody who's aspirational so I am choosing to not to go to

offline selling just because I want to C to a certain kind of audience yeah like but yeah agreed but from the growth side like I think there's a Lind right like a thing for how much ever time it has been will be like the time it is we can Safely assume tally has already hit his Peak M like maybe 3 years back yeah uh at the time of GST change I think that was the highest that was the peak that was a PE right the GST changed and 20189 where High their highest revenue 600 c

sort of I think from there that has been D but now that software has been for 30 years in the market I can safely assume that it will be there for next 30 Years it has has to like go out right like that limy effect will play out there'll Be still large sou of India which will be using tally which will be comfortable with their business networks and people close by right so see again might be a different hypothesis but I think largely with the all the conversational AI shaping up now the interfaces are changing

raply yes that's what like you you told me that right like lot of uh there smmes smbs will not start using the Sals because of the so any particular example of of a Conversational platform or a UI which you felt has reached there see I think you know uh the peak of the conversational uis are the ones which are developed by you know the chat gpts or gemis I talk to them throughout the day and uh uh that hasn't trickled down yet because there are again you know lot of experiment happening but within a year

I can see there are more than uh more than I can tell you 10 different tools that each individual would be Using in terms of our day-to-day uh conversation so one of I don't know if you have used this so uh I love using this Google tool Called Agent space okay what agent space do is you know it allows you to connect with your uh uh other tools and let you chat with all the tools together so I can ask question like what is my uh report on my Salesforce or you know uh what is

a quot of sales that is happening right now or maybe you know I can connect with the Documents and then you know ask a question what is the summary of this what was the Insight of this etc etc so when I'm saying interface changing I'm saying that all those different tools are not converging to chat at the end everything rest would be a database which is connected to a chat system where you can ask anything you call it agent space you call it uh AI agents but the interface which I'm more focused around is becoming

conversational you Just chat and get it done huh so ultimately the chat will be the interface right like so chat is already the interface in lot of things you're saying the chat will remain an interface for doing all sort of activities including you know the where we started tally Etc I strongly think the way we uh do the right now right that is going so that I think already a lot of new age businesses are not super comfortable so tally I think has been ingrained from You know you learn tally in the school and you

know lot of tally coaching centers and then you want to be that Master guy who can you just do tap tap tap and do things so it's a different product for different things but yeah you know in general just speaking out or elongated that part so you said no tally has schools Etc what we realize if you're building for smmes you have to think about education a lot education often plays a very Pivotal role in getting your product implemented in business by education I mean you know couple of examples I can take see Tally what

did did it be it made tally as a educational tool people started learning tally and when they start using it in the business they use tally a couple of other example you know Cisco which has done really really amazing there Cisco created ccnas and all the different courses or you know I don't know my time at least you know Those courses were very popular uh in engineering so we used to look up to you know CCNA and ccnps as a courses what really happened through the courses was because we were doing the courses we are

more comfortable talking about Cisco than any other systems and this is not like one or two example I think if you look deeper into the market you know every B2B company runs some kind of their courses of its own and because education they realize Education is a uh bigger you know driver for any tool adoption in businesses side of it not SMB side of it makes absolute sense makes absolute sense yeah but like what what is your view on WhatsApp okay uh it's the most powerful platform uh in India right now uh I strongly think

you know because of the whole meta ecosystem this entire uh customer and consumer inter uh customer and business interaction the communication is seems to be absolutely dominated by The Meta I like my personal view of WhatsApp is WhatsApp could have been so much more but WhatsApp has been screwed by I don't know what product manages they have you sort of a thing so I think WhatsApp should not have fored into the payments uh I do everything on WhatsApp so like we chatted we had a you you Raj your guy has P me that there's a

meeting on 11 why don't you just you have a meta AI which does all random gibberish thing which I can ask at from the internet why Can't you just read my chat send me a reminder at 9:50 that you are here you are in HSR it'll take you around 1 hour 10 minutes to reach indran nagar why don't you start right now send a reminder 30 minutes back like there's so many good use case which can be built just using the A on top of WhatsApp just on the thing which they are doing right now

that I will start paying for WhatsApp like even if they ask me right now to pay for WhatsApp I'm more than Happy to pay pay for WhatsApp just by monetizing this the data which they have with about any user and building this great personal assistant on WhatsApp because 90% of my communication is on WhatsApp my calls are now on WhatsApp right like they can charge th000 rupees from me for a month I'm more than happy to pay them th000 rupes I'm much more than happy to pay them 1,000 rupees than to pay a chat jpt

or a gini they why are they moving towards Commerce why are They moving towards payments don't look at the big pies which is happening in the industry look at what you already have and buil there see there's a challenge there you know people still consider WhatsApp as a private space where they are talking a lot of private chats or private conversation there and that's one of the biggest reason WhatsApp do not want to position itself as a company which is reading your chat it do not it extremely is cautious about It extremely everyone of us

has an experience that we have texted someone anything and now we are seeing the same ads on Facebook you know we are speculating but WhatsApp do not want to make the speculation real yeah yeah so everyone has that speculation and I I don't think there's a decent amount of users who are willing to trade their privacy for convenience see again different geographies different aspirations or different beliefs U India Might be still okay I don't see a lot of other geography is absolutely I'm very happy to trade my privacy for lot of lot of convenience they

see at the end the core base is consumers and they don't want to build anything which will turn the off I like I fail to understand this logic we still do trust Google Maps we use Google Maps for everywhere we are going we know that they're tracking us we use Gmail every communication of M from my bank account details to X to Y To zed comes in Gmail what balance I have right everything is there online right like Google ecosystem already knows so much about my expectation is WhatsApp ecosystem meta ecosystem already knows everything about

me right like let me ask you this do you think you have shared much more personal or private things on WhatsApp than on Gmail than on Google Maps some somewhere of the time I might have done that like but that's okay but That's okay you know it I have a trust that you won't you know you anonymize the data even if you have to sell it but I have a trust that you like the service also you are giving it only to me right like you're not giving the service to everyone see there were lot

of backlashes when even Google mentioned that they are reading your emails to uh show ads to you Etc there were a lot of backlashes and meta especially the the position it's more of a peer-to-peer Communication it really do not want to do it C reads my email like like leave Google reads my email and tells me that which crit card I need to get this part as well but anyway uh see you know CR genuinely reads my email I tell you how meta is doing it how meta is trying to exactly solve what you what

you're saying so meta has now divided the whole privacy into two part one is when you are conversing P to peer yeah app to app Yeah it's absolutely private that's what their stand is at least you know end to end encrypted end to end encrypted but the meta conversations are not encrypted huh but the conversation with businesses yeah the conversation with businesses now that has a different privacy with it those conversations generally are driven through Partners like us and to keep it separated it's saying like Okay you know in that case Partners can build layers

on top of it now that has two advantages At the end if meta or Whatsapp is a de facto communication tool and you're right you know there are so many things that can happen but meta building lot of these things is not that great idea where meta opening up the platform to let others build on top of it is a better idea and that's what exactly what we're doing you know the use case that you mentioned now is exactly what we're trying to build you you know read from the conversation itself and decide upon What

need to be done and what that's only for businesses to push the ads and notification and their sales cycle and things like that I'm asking it more from an individual lens as a individual I want to get that service from WhatsApp like and I tell you right if there is any other app which can sit on top of WhatsApp and give me that service or because see platforms like you know whenever I I think there was some day when telegram's downloads in India scale Like anything right like because of some Fiasco happening over some place

and privacy concerns and things like that you can always get downloads but you cannot get Dows so because platforms by their nature are so sticky that everyone came back on WhatsApp right like I remember some of my friend texting me on telegram I still have a telegram because there massive crypto Community who sits out of theam and they only set out of telegram only right like but like Largely everyone came back on WhatsApp because the network thing I think that's what makes WhatsApp a lot lagard in terms of innovation they should if they were not

like and I hope there's a new inter entering into this segment in the chat segment and saying starting from business chats like between teams and then opening to individuals who can take care of all understand all my conversations and take care of everything I'll be more than happy WhatsApp has gone L out let's assume they're listening to us and they might Implement some of it that's what the best we can isum about it yeah yeah WhatsApp is one product which I think it's it's definitely way powerful but definitely you're right and you know I said

you the apprehension they would never want to position on the peer to-peer but on business side it's a def facto right now you know we as a platform so we have been telepone Platform for last 10 years here when WhatsApp launched at API we know we knew immediately back then that it's no longer a telepone platform it's a call plus WhatsApp platform when we speak to businesses that's what the position we have that we help your entire communication through you know one platform you know WhatsApp is 70% of business communication call is 30% of business

communication but combinely that's what Indian Indian businesses Interact with Indian businesses do not email unlike Western you know Western counterparts still use emails a lot India do not use email India do not use SMS now uh iMessage also is limited to very uh no one use IM messages uh very the point is like if if I want to use a platform I should be able to Ping everyone with that platform it cannot be that 90% of people I'm pinging on that and then 10% of people I want to use IM message unless until I have

a very Specific use case I'm very spooked by government I'm very spooked by things that for that 10% of my use case I can only use that platform then I'll use it but otherwise you want to use a platform which is very much generic in nature and you can shoot anywhere you want right like messages that's what the network effect is yeah and at the end WhatsApp has buil thatsa has it so WhatsApp is even if WhatsApp is lazy in ruling out this feature they will always have that Advantage and eventually uh VI you know

often now this is another of my over the time hypothesis as or learnings I've built as a as a Tex Tech people we often are intrigued by we can build this we can do this Etc but the core consumer even business owners as a consumer you know they are sticking to very basic softfit WhatsApp is solving the problem you know and they're like not worried even if they for example the feature that we talked About if he they I think that's a great monetization layer for them huh but it'll be adopted by maybe 1% people

only that itself will give them great monetization their Base Great monetization layer for them and some features of it then over time because you have a you know early adopter crowd who has already adopted the feature who have already you know went through your privacy concerns X concerns y concerns choosing the good features you can slly Start trickling down some of these features to larger audience with real great use cases so that they also find more value out of this communication than anything else so either WhatsApp can do it or at some point of time

OS will do it I see anyone and everyone getting an assistant yeah so if WhatsApp has to do it they have to do it now move Now or Apple has been a big failure with apple intelligence but at some point of time with lot of these models getting You know open sourced and deep stack coming in an open source with all the weights and all the configuration available I think some of the Apple employees should have a big grein about the Deep stack coming in they will build the Apple intelligence at some point of time

and then Apple will pick your data from maps and your data from chat and your data from everywhere and then we'll give you that cohesive assistant so either they can move fast or Os should Definitely build it absolutely and I I think you know that's that's also a reason why even though everybody is excited about maybe uh you know Apple intelligence or deep sick I even today I actually follow the development on Gemini the Google part of it very Thor I strongly believe Google has a very very strong advantage of distribution yes very very strong

yeah I me is Jack H and see we you know there is a iPhone user but you know if you look at number of People on Android it's way way higher combined if you look at Google Map if you look at YouTube if you look at Chrome browser if you look at whatnot I mean there's a massive distribution with them they might not have moned Google works completely on Google right like docs X YZ I don't need Excel level I'm good with Google Sheets and now when they've integrated Gemini there I don't know if you

used it it's so so powerful yeah the Gemini right there it's so I Still take screenshots and put it in chat jpt and ask it for the response because I don't I don't know there's something about Google so I use particular apps like uh there's one app which turns it into podcast any PDF you put it right like that the notebook llm notebook llm so now that has gone conversational so like two people are talking it will be in a podcast form you can also enter as thirdd person in that and then you can talk

can you elaborate On that point and you can also discuss this so that's good thing so Google has some of these things going right but I hope that uh have you used their image model no I've not used I find imagin 3 better than any other AI models right now with respect to realistic image all you know be it Sora not Sora but D you know be it any other model their images are artistic in nature not a photographic style imag 3 it gives you photographic Style images which you really can't differentiate is it real

human or is it a a gener I find it way better than other thing the prices of Geminis are much cheaper than open AI which also is you know very useful for us to develop on top of it I somehow more believer on the Gemini side which I see lot of people might not agree with me but I I think that no anyone wins like I'm good with that Google winning is great because Google then has all the context I need to give to Google and that's what you know distribution yeah at the end after

so many years that's what I learned you know distribution matters that's from the business lens from my personal lens Google is all the context I need to give to any as system right like I don't need to take a screenshot upload it on chat GB to get the context and then reply on it right like Google knows everything so more than happy to use it on Google if Someday they do it what's your philosophy of Team how do you build team you know how do you really uh shape up the culture I don't have any

big philosophies on this direction is just that I disagree with a few things so I'll be very clear with that so lot of Indian businesses have this philosophy that you are a family right like team is a family I don't agree with that part like I've been saying in so many of my content recently that team is not Family my family's love for me is unconditional like they will love me despite me doing horrible things so family is unconditional your team won't do that team should not do it because team is there to win together

yes you know it's not too for the bad times to be together yes yes it's more like a profession team up for championship in the market in the market you win theet the India I this is a favorite thing yeah Che the India was a team it not Family yeah yeah yeah like like for us winning in the market is like getting maximum market share having maximum revenue and things like that that's it that's what the team is uh culture and all I'm not particularly sure of what team culture has been because we have been

a very lean team we never had more than 20 25 people at our height as well right now now we are like 10 people M so but what do you look in people when you hire Them what do I look in people when I hire them uh so multiple signals uh like I'm not everyone particular person will have that signal so I'll tell you like one good signal like if you see anywhere and uh so someone has been you know in that X field throughout his college or first 2 three years of his career as

well will and suddenly he decided that no I want to switch to Y and then he leaves everything and then switches to Y uh Like say the person was a coder did computer science did coding for two years and then now he thinks that he should be a designer photographers and he has that great artistic sense you should hire that person like if he has worked for one or two years also in that field you should hire that person because now his passion is in that field and if you have a requirement of that field

then he's one of the great guy to fill the SS right like because he had a Good thing going on with Cod and other things as well but now he switched the career interes he's gone towards design because of his passion and his own calling right so that's a great thing uh so I like people who are passionate about something uh because then it takes away from that Harari sort of a thing that yeah you are working under someone or someone is your boss and things like that it's more like you're working for your passion

like you want this to Happen working as a team right like so that uh takes care of it but very hard to find people who are you know passionate about Finance UPI backend integration and things like that's that's like very hard sort of a thing to you can be passionate about you know winning in itself is a good passion to have right like I want to win in the market that in itself is a good passion like if nothing that common denominator should be there in that person that Aspirational aspect of it should be there

do you think finding passion for for you know passionate people for B2B side of the business is even tougher because you know consumer side a lot of people people can relate business like for that matter UPI and the layers the staff Etc I mean who really gets interested about it till the time they know about it yes yes yes I'm 100% on that's why I like winning in itself is a good passion like if you're passionate About winning that itself that base layer of it itself is great if you're not just coming to like you

should come to do your work and uh you know close it that itself is good enough but if you have a little more than that you want to learn as well you want to grow as as well you want to see scale as well uh you get bored after seeing a certain like I remember initially my thought was like you know I just want to see thousand businesses using my app daily That itself will be a great skill and eventually at a point of time like five lakh businesses were using our app daily and we

were bored of that like we want transaction to happen on our business so like getting bard of that thing as well right like moving on to the next thing that is also important and being generally a little more in that direction you know of learning direction that works interesting uh have you fired somebody recently or what are The common reasons you fir we had to let go of a decent chunk of people because of some regulatory changes which has happened uh the product got stalled for a year back into apart from those challenges but if

you really fire somebody you know because of uh non-performance yeah maybe yes so how how do you how do you take that call how do you decide sit talk with the person like like even if you are firing him for non-performance that does not not the Zoom call A lot of people do that yeah yeah like not the zoom call but like even if you're letting go of someone for non-performance that does not mean that he is a like he might not be fit in that role that does not mean that person is incompetent or

you should not develop that attitude you should explicitly say your concern and before you go ahead and let go of anyone usually have a conversation two three months back right like these are the things I want Improvement these are the things I think you can do better these are the ways you can do it better but even if the person has not been able to go up you actually and then you help them help them transition as well right like yeah yeah absolutely so a couple of things I've always said to other Founders you know

that one fighting doesn't necessarily to be ugly you you can always do it never never I'm friends with all of like the people I've worked with and I don't Think uh until unless you know it's a Integrity issue now I mean I never make it ugly Integrity sometime it definitely gets ugly on one side but apart from that uh I always ensure and you know um what I've learned the best of the founders always do it themsel in person they do not really do Zoom calls or uh do not let a do it or Etc

a lot of people are so hesitant firing is such a subject now I mean people get unfort why is it like I don't understand why is it Such a you've not been great at your job uh-huh we letting you go uhhuh but you know people do not both side you know do not really uh take that professionally I mean the way you making it easier I have I've heard about Founders Founders don't take that call Founders let somebody say it I I've seen Founders even not having HR or small team they'll ask some other guy

in the company that you tell this person that he's Fired I will be very happy to get fired as well like if someone has to come and fire me and give me reasonable Reasons I'm happy to walk away like things like that so I think both side it works for me like let people ask people I've always said to people yeah I mean if somebody's not been able to perform here doesn't mean he can't do anywhere else it often more about just performance it's about culture you know different aspect of it fitment Etc and I've

seen People you know you know might not have done great year but then when they moved to different role they were like amazing and I often says yeah I mean do it graciously so that other person finds another job it doesn't you know become a dent for his own mental thing that I I've always helped people who have moved out to get them placed in companies and things like that absolutely so they can be good at another role right like so that kind of things I've also helped People transition like in the company only like

if you're not being able to perform in a role like why don't you try B for 2 3 months see how you are doing that that also works yep yep that's uh I'll not say often but uh uh you know with people i' I've seen you know they really want to fight and are not able to do in certain certain areas then you know we change it uh two different but if there is a like clear intent issue then you change anything Doesn't like for some people also they come and realize that your company is

not the place they themselves want to go right like for them also it's very clear it's just that they're also waiting for you to have that conversation you might also be waiting to have that conversation that can also be a reason for this thing getting slowed down if you have to give one advice to people who are building around fintech or new startups trying to build around you know Fintech is what would that be be regulatory compliant be patient you're asking entrepreneurs to be patient right yes on the regulatory side on the regulatory side be

patient be regulatory compliant so my view has always been this uh in the financial services of it you can't you know really innovate and build something new right like there is no dent in the universe which you will do those dent in the universe are very rare phenomenon which happens in Financial services like everyone is doing lending you are doing some other form of lending you are doing but I still feel if you want to get that alpha or Edge you have to do something like even if the entire uh industrial complex or the regulatory

environment does not like you'll have to understand that you'll have to navigate that and you'll have to bring something new like you cannot it's still the alpha is there like you can do A great lending business you can build a decent book over some period of time that's a great beta business as well right to have and it absolutely a lot of investors also want to have some clear betas on their portfolio because then you have absolute return guaranteed you know that this business will grow at this gagger it cannot go burst and things like

that but if as an entrepreneur you're looking for that Alpha then you will have to do something Different like this is a very contrarian thing to say in fintech because you have to bring something new into the market right like why will Market reward you if you're not bringing anything new to the market so that's one view if there's a Time machine and you can go back to yourself 10 years back what would be the thing you would be saying to yourself there's a time machine I can go back 10 years back I'll say myself

move to a better pin code Move to a better Geography okay yeah yeah move to us maybe if you get an opportunity mhm move to a better geography move to a better pin code move to a place where you have lot more Innovation happening MH uh lot more new things happening I think that's one advice I'll give myself interesting yeah like if you're in India it makes absolute sense to move to Bangalore like it makes sense to move to Bangalore the best geography in India you can stay in Delhi NCR you can stay in Mumbai

as well but it makes sense to move to bangal because it's again Network effect right like and when I say us I mean SF and B area right like it makes sense to move to B area and maybe work there for a large company for some time and then figure out how this large company has been building it because once you come out of that experience you are still valued in other VC worlds and other places as well right like so great VI This was such a wonderful conversation I think I picked up a lot

of insights here I I knew about cashbook for some time but uh I think this conversation has been real great because uh I was able to understand much more details than I knew initially I'm not sure how did you enjoy but I'm sure you know our guest who listening to this going to enjoy this for sure yeah same here I superbly enjoy I am in of your experience of running it for 10 years my operator in segment and Making it profitable right like youve always been profitable so that's a superb thing thanks yeah thanks okay