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How to climb the Fintech ladder
284 Plays9 months ago
Zaggle is a B2B SaaS Fintech startup helping companies digitise and optimize their payment and expense workflow using AI, ML and is on a mission to revolutionize banking for corporates. In this conversation, Raj shares his multiple journeys of finding market opportunities and how he scaled up each of his ventures.
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Read more about Zaggle:-
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3.From Start To Stock Markets: Zaggle Founder Raj Narayanam On The 11-Year Journey To An IPO
4.We have been the cockroaches of the Fintech SaaS space: Zaggle’s Raj Narayanam
5.Valuation Is Temporary But Value Is Permanent: Founder, Zaggle
6.Raj N: The Odd One Out Setting Unprecedented Milestones in the FinTech Industry
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Transcript
Raj's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi guys, this is Raj. I am the founder of Zagil, a B2B SaaS Pintech company.
00:00:18
Speaker
This conversation is an amazing journey of understanding how business environment in India has evolved over the decades. As your host, Akshay Dutt talks to Raj, a serial entrepreneur who has been building businesses since the 1990s. Raj is currently the founder of Zaggel, which is among the very few fintechs that is profitable. Zaggel helps companies to digitize and optimize their payment and expense workflows using AI, ML,
00:00:44
Speaker
and is on a mission to be the premier neo-bank for businesses. In this conversation, Raj shares his multiple journeys of finding market opportunities and how he scaled up each of his ventures. Listen on and if you like such insightful conversations with disruptive startup founders then do subscribe to the founder thesis podcast on any audio streaming app.
Educational Background and Early Ventures
00:01:11
Speaker
I graduated in 1992. Then I went and did my MBA from Ford School of Management. And while I was in Ford, I started a company called SL Limited. While I was still in Ford when I started that company, went ahead, did build that company into one of it. It was in financial services, built it to be a very decent sized company. After Ford, we had the opportunity to get placed. So I appeared for the interviews and I was shortlisted in a company.
00:01:41
Speaker
economic times. But suddenly, somewhere that Gita in me was, kisi orkale kya kam gareen. Why don't I try my own? Though I had a standing offer from economic times, it was considered good. My interest was in stock market and I thought it is beautiful for me to carry on with. But somehow, somewhere, something triggered
00:02:03
Speaker
because he came back to Hyderabad and went to my hometown. There my uncle runs a very large factory. I went and met him. The moment I met him, I don't know, something happened, something changed. He came back and said, I am not going to join anywhere and I am going to start work out.
00:02:21
Speaker
And when I started the company, it was basically in the financial services, because interest was always financial services. And we started getting over these large companies, we would arrange loans, facilitation, like today, how investment banker does. So basically, debt, corporate syndication, et cetera, et cetera, is what I was doing.
00:02:42
Speaker
How did you do trust building? This is a business that runs on trust and typically the traditional players used to be CA firms who would have that long relationship of trust and they would tell their clients to mail in a range and then they would know someone in a government bank who would get the file passed. How did you enter into this kind of a...
00:03:01
Speaker
So I would say to be very honest, what I did was at that time, we started with fixed deposits to raise fixed deposits for companies. So what I would do is, so we used to do a lot of tricks. I don't know if I can very openly talk about those tricks. For any entrepreneur out there who is going to listen to this podcast, I would definitely would want to at least pass on a couple of tricks.
Innovative Strategies and Growth
00:03:24
Speaker
So let's say, for example, what I would do is I will convince my customers when they are writing their
00:03:30
Speaker
2 lakhs, 3 lakhs, 4 lakhs, 5 lakhs checks, I would say please do not mention any date on it and this will get posted in 2 or 3 days and I will collect all those checks, go to the company and say tell them that I have got about 60 lakhs of checks with me. My problem is that you are giving 5% and I want 7%.
00:03:51
Speaker
So, they would also act very hard and they will say no to any DJ. No, companies who want to raise money, they will relent. So, I will hold those checks for 2-3 days. 3 days later, they will come.
00:04:05
Speaker
We are called to come and say, you have not come back. I would say who else has offered us seven and a half, eight percent. So we planned, I'm sorry. And eventually they will relent. They will do a little bit, but they will give me that seven, seven and a half percent margin. And I used to pass on five. So I used to make two, two and a half percent, which was more money for me and I would go, you know, I would say tens of crores in a month. So this was like debt, basically like debt, debt.
00:04:35
Speaker
What today people do like that mutual fund, that time they used to. Yes, mutual fund came in 1995, so this was just before that and it came and I was able to raise lot of money for a lot of companies.
00:04:50
Speaker
Tafana passed out. The ability people used to say, if anybody you want to earn 2 or 3% extra on your total income, go to this guy. This guy is based out of Ashok. We are in New Delhi. Go and talk to him. So I would get people from all over India who would say that I would have borrowed this much money.
00:05:08
Speaker
and in two years I was able to do about I think 125 watt corrodes is what was made by the second year turnover and essentially you had an HNI clientele base for home use.
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, everyone wants more return on money. Yes, more the same, one or two
Risk Management and International Ambitions
00:05:30
Speaker
way. He said, my friend's uncle, my uncle's uncle, my uncle's uncle, I was very prompted servicing. He prompted servicing. So mother, it was great and I had direct cunning. So it was, and I was MBA educated from a very good family. My brother being IRDS, office father being in a cigarette that time, I think he was retired.
00:05:53
Speaker
I think here, being South Indian would have worked to your advantage. It was people as you said, South Indians are auditioned. Absolutely, absolutely. I wouldn't be more toward the thing which worked in my favour was South Indian family, conservative family. This is when always tell the truth.
00:06:12
Speaker
Okay, so companies also used to feel the same, clients also used to feel the same. Because companies also was run by all, I would say, as in all along, let's say, North Indians and here, it will be all, clients also are North Indians, right? So, North Indians would not believe a North Indian, right? But North Indians, you must talk.
00:06:31
Speaker
So that's how this kid had done a lighter road. But people saw that thing is promised, people saw I'm able to give them a better service and a better price and ensured that if they had any issues, I could quickly solve it. So then what happened is, while I was doing this, I am a very good reader of business.
00:06:50
Speaker
So my only job, if you really ask me, even in today's my company, my only job is reading the environment. I don't do anything else because I don't have a day-to-day job, right? My job is all about figuring out what possibly will hit us tomorrow, day after, and that's my job.
00:07:08
Speaker
So, I have to make sure that we build a sustainable, long-term, rewarding company at any cost. So, I don't look at today. I am not tactical. I always look at tomorrow and tomorrow will always remain tomorrow because tomorrow will never come. That is my story all along and what I realized is that within the companies which were offering
00:07:28
Speaker
5-7-8% as commissions when started going and as high as 12-13%. So, their fixed deposit rate would be 10% and they would give 12% commission over and above that. So, that rattled me for couple of days. So, the cost of funds to the consumer would be 20%.
00:07:50
Speaker
At 22-23% and slowly I saw that some of the companies were even willing to give 15% because they wanted money to come in so that whatever outstanding fixed deposits were there, they didn't. So this was a cycle which went that money gave them and went for redemption of the earlier money which they had picked up.
00:08:13
Speaker
And I only wanted that extra by people listening. So that made me very nervous and I thought that this possibly something is going to happen. And then I had a chance meeting with an executive director in Delhi, me being a South Indian, a Canadian. So I told him, so he said, no, I'm seeing a lot of stress in my accounts.
00:08:36
Speaker
So, I said, wow! He knew. He said, yes, there are defaults starting. So, that went and that made me think as to what's going wrong. And then quickly, by saying, this habit of seeing a little bit ahead has always held me in good stead. See, this is negative to it also because if you are always thinking of tomorrow, there are lots of things which you are missing today. So, this is my learning also that you should have a balanced review of today and tomorrow.
00:09:04
Speaker
And then what happened is, I figured out somehow that I want to get international exposure.
Shift to the US and New Strategies
00:09:10
Speaker
If I don't get international exposure, I will not be able to really do this. And I realized that India is not there as yet in terms of financial markets.
00:09:22
Speaker
that we are a business, India, Parna, business today, Parna, economic times, Parna, then Wall Street. So I started figuring out that we have to do something which will get me an international exposure. So one of my friends who was in Wall Street said, why don't you come down to US and then we'll figure it out. So that's how my journey started.
00:09:44
Speaker
Suddenly, I had gone to my hometown just to visit because I used to go there back and forth because of a lot of vaginics. And then, in that, I attended one meditation program. It was that while doing meditation, it occurred to me that I should leave India.
00:10:01
Speaker
and I came in 13 days flat. I got my Visa done. I got my F1 and I zoomed off the US. You wound up SSL. I just slowly wound up SSL. Taking new deposits. Not for months. So what we did was, we sold the company to another company called Patters & Securities.
00:10:26
Speaker
So, when I realized that I have to go, though the transaction eventually, if you look at it, eventually some money came in before I left for the US, but still the money came after I was in the US. So, we were able to send that company because everybody wanted that, what is this high-growth company doing? We were very famous in Gilead and North India as well, I would say. And then South India also, we had started expanding. We had opened up our office, very ambitious. We were amazed how it was.
00:10:55
Speaker
And then while doing this meditation, when it hit me, I realized that some things, there is more, a bigger, larger power out there. And the supreme power has guided me to do this. I came back 13 days flat. I was able to apply and got my visa and went to New York.
00:11:12
Speaker
And while we did the rest of the stuff, the money, the cashiers, transfers, selling of the company, some of that stuff, we had to do it to put here and then it was done. And that when I went to the US, I was a very candid, a rich guy.
00:11:28
Speaker
I went to India to walk. I went to India to walk. I went to India to walk. I went to India to walk. I went to India to walk. I went to India to walk. I went to India to walk. I went to India to walk. I went to India to walk.
00:11:59
Speaker
It became Rice Waterhouse Coopers in 2000. But that time it was PW is how it was called. I was picked in the MCS practice. I joined what is MCS? MCS is Management Consulting Services.
00:12:14
Speaker
So, MCS practised me, picked me up, interviewed me, and asked me what got me a higher grade because of that. So, the question was, how do I get involved in this?
00:12:34
Speaker
He said, does it happen? He said, yes. Imagine, why you will jump from here and look at who will survive. Oh man, you have got a good sense of humor. So he said, what is it that you want to do? I said, I want to build a knowledge portal. I want to figure out how can we build a knowledge portal in which I am able to put all the knowledge which I have, which others have and have it aggregated at a single place.
00:13:00
Speaker
Because what I told him is that you want to do something which some of these internet guys are trying to do. That the internet was not a great word, right? It was like it was good. But it was picking up, right? It was not mainstream yet. No, it was not mainstream at all. Not mainstream at all. And Hotmail, it started there, Hotmail, it started in 2016.
00:13:25
Speaker
and we started. So when MCS practiced me all over Europe, Americas, Americas, Pura, Europe, Gomteri, Gomteri, Gomteri and then we started and made lot of money. Lot of money means I was built at about $1125 an hour. Mahatmura Lactata and sometimes
00:13:45
Speaker
We didn't feel it would be wrong because there was no sharing and my problem was that I needed work. And you were doing what? Analytics based consenting? BPR, business process engineering. So you would go to a very large brand, go to them, you will tell them that you are able to correct this clause, you would possibly be able to save about 40-50 million dollars a year.
00:14:14
Speaker
And then we will go ahead and tell him that if you were to implement this particular softwares, possibly the saving could be much higher. So we will show them a ROI in the US. If you have a ROI of about 8-9%, it is considered very good. We would go, we will sell contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
00:14:34
Speaker
because it used to be company-wide, country-wide, then continent-wide, then inter-continent-wide and it would be sometimes all over the world. So you have to do a VPR across. So for me, it was beautiful learning. Amazing means amazing. But my only problem was that the work was from Monday to Thursday.
00:14:54
Speaker
So, Thursday, Monday afternoon, they would ask you to go back to your base office. Friday, nobody would come to office. For me, I used to work even on Saturdays in the US. So, my partner would sometimes tell me, I received a complaint against you from the client saying that you were seen in the office on Saturday.
00:15:17
Speaker
I said, when I was working, you are saying, complain, they should be very happy. I said, no Raj, please understand, you are not supposed to come to office on Saturday because they will mistake you that you are taking some information away. I said, wow, I was under the impression that we have dove and been nice by working hard, whereas they were very clear that nothing works.
00:15:41
Speaker
So for me, being a Virgolek and charging $1,125 an hour, all were things which were making me very uncomfortable. So I did two projects. The third project I did was with buy.com, auditing their process, then went to amazon.com. So did Amazon. So post Amazon, buy.com is what I would say. When I looked at it, I asked him, what's your valuation? So he said, it's about a billion dollars.
00:16:07
Speaker
It was a billion dollar business. That time, billion dollar was about 40 rupees a dollar. So it was like 4000 crores. I said, wow, 4000 crores. And you know, that is when I
Return to India and the Birth of Yantra
00:16:20
Speaker
thought that it was better.
00:16:24
Speaker
And this was when my entrepreneurial leaders started again. And I realized that I have to get into business. So I had a friend called Richard Maziers. Richard Maziers was a Polish immigrant into the US. So both of us, me and him, started a company. So I took sabbatical, then came back to India. Basically, the idea was, can India be a
00:16:46
Speaker
India may offshore centre set a period so that cost Arvind Raj we should be able to take and then sell it in the US. Make it in India, sell it in the US was the thought. So, it came down to India and then realized that they just love India for coming back to India was a huge feeling and slowly we started 2001 what happened is the dot com bust happened.
00:17:09
Speaker
So, 2000, April and the dot-com bust happened and because of that dot-com burst, if you had a company which had a dot-com attached to it, you were considered very, very bad. So, I actually went through a period where no bank would even want to open my bank account because I had naked dot-com in my company.
00:17:31
Speaker
In India you are saying? In India, in India I am saying. And they said, why is your company dot com? Because the bust had happened in the URLs and it had collapsed everywhere. So I went ahead then Richard and me decided that he will take the US part of the operations. I also wanted to get married. So I said he will also settle down in India and then we will see again. And then they decided now that I want to stay back in India.
00:18:00
Speaker
And that is when we said, so Richard was very nice, very kind. We beautifully remained friends till today. And he took the US part of the company, I took the Indian part of the company. And then here, my uncle was a large industrialist out of Bangladesh. So he said, why don't you join hands with me? So I then joined hands with him, gave 50% of my equity vote. I had taken from Richard, I gave it to him.
00:18:28
Speaker
Then I started running a merchandising company. So when I posted in 2000, would you ever run a merchandising, gifting, corporate gifting business that I would have loved.
00:18:42
Speaker
But the loud sound, the loud, the loud is how I would have laughed and said, no way, no way. Because some of the contents of millions of dollars, projects is what we were doing in kahaye, e-shirts and all that. But I saw the potential, what I realized is,
00:18:59
Speaker
I had the opportunity to set up a cement plant because I had enough money to do my stuff with stock market, consulting, stock market, plus I had enough money to sell it because I had a consulting company in between who would just keep 20% and pay the rest to me. So that was the biggest advantage which I had. And I had the same kind of money, I had a lot of money, I had a lot of money.
00:19:26
Speaker
And I came to India with that money and then started the merchandising business. The whole idea was I could have done a steel company, I could have done a cement company, I could have done any company, any means, any business. But I was very clear that I don't want to do any traditional business. I don't want to be part of any traditional business. I will do something where I can be known for it.
00:19:49
Speaker
And that's why if you look at what happened, E means energy, Yantra means machine. If you put energy in a machine, it runs. That was the idea. And we started Yantra.com and Yantra.com. The industry didn't do well. Palaisand lab was a big struggle. People used to not believe that I worked for
00:20:09
Speaker
Nice overall scooper, say, oh, I'm an accent, thought of two accent. Are you back from the U.S.? Yeah, absolutely back from the U.S. They didn't want to know. What were you going and pitching? Like you would want to? Yes. If dry gifting, like that, we only give it. Nice.
00:20:28
Speaker
So, mine was a B2C company, you want to write, let's say, Akshay on your T-shirt. So, I'll give you our designing software. So, mine was a pure software. Thought was always software, it was always behind me. And you could print Akshay, Aala, Akshay or whatever you want. You can print. Now, I'll dispatch the printed T-shirt to you. I mean, if it's an order quantity like this one. No, even one piece, you could do that.
00:20:56
Speaker
We thought that we are a billion plus.
Yantra's B2B Transition
00:21:08
Speaker
No, no, because buy.com without everything was billion. So that is how it started. And then because of this bust happened, buy.com became no buy.com. And it was tough for them. And then eventually one day I received the order for five t-shirts. And I realized that this order which has come on the web is from a company called TCA.
00:21:33
Speaker
and t-shirt with something to be printed on the t-shirt. We started thinking that other A Panch t-shirt is company say Milsattan. I started, I changed my model from a pure B2C to B2V. Because Joe Jacknow ride lot of consultants leaving me because they did not want to be part of it. They thought that like it's our waste of time. He is on online, he is doing offline here in India.
00:22:02
Speaker
You know, India, people, why is it changing? People don't love change and think those days. Those days, entrepreneurship was like not celebrated, as it is celebrated today. So in India, if you really look at it, there are two things which are like really celebrated. One is vegetables, second is socks. Nothing else ever gets celebrated in India. I was coming from an environment in the US where failure was also celebrated.
00:22:29
Speaker
Failure was also said, you have failed in this, please come and join us because you would have learnt a lot. That's how it started with us and slowly, steadily, I grew from first year about 72 lakhs in revenue. Next year, I did about three times that revenue, then doubled the next year and went on and then very good and we became the first company in India to be organized.
00:22:54
Speaker
Today you have a lot of big companies but I moved the model to B2B and then figured out that this is something which I have to do in a deep manner and what I have to do is ensure that I am able to service companies better. So what happened is then Accenture happened so today I am not under contract from them otherwise it's very difficult to speak.
00:23:19
Speaker
But we had Randy and other stuff with them, those news for Ian's jobs. And we built the first model, which was a run-and-based merchandising portal. Oh, great! I tell you, they're real exchangers. It's a phenomenal company. They thought we are ahead and we also thought we are ahead, right? So we matched when I set up something called a smart bipodal.
00:23:41
Speaker
where they could come in from all over Accenture, could come in and order stuff. And so like these shirts, pens, with their neck and shoulders, straps, earstee shirts, bags, dairies, mugs, creams, trophies, anything you name it, right? Anything you name it. And then from there, my journey slowly moved. I started doing brand stores, then NASCOM, I got in touch with NASCOM. What do you mean, you started doing brand stores?
00:24:06
Speaker
So, what happened is now, B2B and B2B, because we had started a lot of company, said, I have a branch in Bangalore, I have a branch in Pune, like that I have 25 branches. Now, either you set up store in all the 25 branches. What is one?
00:24:23
Speaker
please go ahead and give us a centralized access where all these branches can come in and buy stuff. My exposure of earlier doing website, I already was really good at it. Quickly set up the entire system where they could even track.
00:24:39
Speaker
as to where is their order. I was able to put that you have placed an order, you have this quantity, this is getting spaced, this day it would reach even while happy means happy. So, for example, I say a bank would have like a company account with the Yantra and then each branch manager could log in into the Yantra, place an order for his branch and track the order.
00:25:02
Speaker
Correct. Like all of this means all of this we went ahead and we did like A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H kind of stuff. And then for, for hundreds of companies, means overall about 5, 5, 7, that was also like what kind of traction, like huge means huge traction. Cockney got, we raised our first round of capital in 2008. And that was when I was the founding investor for Loyalty Rewards.
00:25:29
Speaker
So, the company called Loyalty Rewards, which eventually was sold to buildings for an awesome amount of money, was founded by a guy called Vijay Jayarajan and I was the founding investor.
Founding and Principles of Zaggle
00:25:40
Speaker
Well, at that point of time, we were about 60-odd crores in revenue. And you did not need external funding for this because this was... Any profitable. Really profitable business, highly means highly profitable. You don't need to do cash burn to acquire customers like this.
00:25:56
Speaker
Ahing is a beautiful model. I acquired customers those days at negative pencils. They would pay me to acquire them. Because I have gone to the company, I will charge the company for setting up a brand store and then they would direct all their employees to buy merchandise from there and they would make money.
00:26:16
Speaker
Wow, amazing. The ICICI store, you would charge IIFR and ICICI is just an example here, but as ICICI has to set up a bill where ICICI employees can log in place orders for people or diaries. Absolutely. And that is what happened and which helped me build up more and more business, Akshay. And from there, I never saw back from 91 onwards, God willing, worked hard, harder and very hard.
00:26:44
Speaker
It's interesting how life comes full circle. Your first business was selling t-shirts and you went back to that in a way. Absolutely means absolutely. That is what I feel when I say that you would have laughed at me for saying that would you sell gifts on merchandise but life had its own circle. It came full circle when from selling t-shirts back to selling t-shirts.
00:27:08
Speaker
And this journey continued till about 2014, we raised multiples. One quick question, how did you manage the supplies of it? Did you have in-house printers or were you working with vendors to do the fulfilment? Like how did you manage fulfilment? Sure. So in the initial stage, of course, I had vendors, but then I set up a state of art, 50,000 square feet, our own facility, which could do embroidery, printing, decoration of any kind. And then Akshay, at that time,
00:27:38
Speaker
you will not believe the world's largest company merchandising was a company called polyconcent.
00:27:46
Speaker
Poly concept came to India, saw us and said and told our investors that we have not seen a company of this size, this level and this thinking all over Asia. We have been to every country including China but here is where we are seeing huge. We have not seen scale like this anywhere else. Which was also one way very fulfilling for me.
00:28:12
Speaker
and I realized that we have built a good business. Then in 2011 is when I was again thinking ahead. I was seeing a lot of competition coming from Flipkart where they would give huge discounts. There is no deal with the Flipkart and there were like a lot of others. They were nice. Competing with you, they wouldn't print Accenture's name on a diary and send it out.
00:28:38
Speaker
I absolutely agree with you that they would not do that. Only thing they would do is they will show the t-shirt at half the price at which I was selling. So price, discovery, comparison, those things would put pressure in your budget. Completely, completely. We just, in a matter of span, I would say,
00:29:00
Speaker
became so difficult because by then internet was everywhere, people were able to check the prices, surprise discovery was there and one of your major strengths was that the ability for you to price. So pricing moved from your hand into the customer's hands. Once it moved from your hand to customer's hand,
00:29:23
Speaker
We knew that of course it is going to be a little bit tougher, it is going to be tighter and we have to be very careful. And that is when as I told you constantly thinking ahead, it was very important for me to see as to what next. And I wanted to build a business on 4 tenants. That is when why Leontra was highly profitable, doing very well.
00:29:44
Speaker
I still wanted to see ahead what I saw was that lot of roadblocks which would come in our way. So we will have to typically actually become a more lifestyle business than a large conglomerate corporate because of the price discovery being out there everywhere.
Zaggle's Growth in Digital Payments
00:30:00
Speaker
So, because of this problem, what we realized was that we will have to quickly change tags and see what's scalable. And I want to see why always my thought has been to build a very large scalable business. Don't want to build anything which is not really scalable. So, from there is where our entire journey started. So, that is when I decided that we will build the business or any business from then on. If I have to build, I will build it on 4 tenets.
00:30:29
Speaker
What were those tenets? A, business has to be global in nature, scalable in nature, tech first and a business in which we should have some experience. If we don't have any experience in that business, we will not touch it.
00:30:44
Speaker
I said, this is the tenets I am putting, at least I have some guiding principles on basis of which I will either choose a company or not choose a business or not choose a business. And then we started. You were also paneling, thinking of exiting Eantra while you were doing this? Yes, I had.
00:31:02
Speaker
So in 2008, I had exited a little bit. 2010, I had exited because investors were there. So I had sold some of my stake to investors. And in 2014, when my term ended as MD, in any case, somebody else was supposed to run it.
00:31:17
Speaker
So, what happened is that in 2011 itself, I started thinking that I have to do something with US majority holder after the 2010 sale. I was still with majora in the sense, just above majority. Just above majority, but you had a significant investment. And then post that, post that, you know, I sold one more time in 2014 and selling in 2014, I was down to about 17%
00:31:45
Speaker
and not too much of and I had already started Zaggle by then and Zaggle started becoming and the whole idea was to build the company basis this four tenets and I saw a huge scope in Zaggle. I realized that how did you finalize Zaggle based on these four tenets just tell me that not processed. So see the word Zaggle is why Haggle when you can Zaggle?
00:32:10
Speaker
Is the antidote to haggle. Don't haggle, just zaggle. Was what was the thought. And from there, our entire premise was,
00:32:22
Speaker
build something which is platform agnostic, payment instrument, scalable, usable across industries and can grow as businesses become digital, can grow very large. So, whole concept was digitization. So, digitization is sexy today. We thought about digitization about 10 years back. So, you thought of Sagil as a payment, digital payment?
00:32:49
Speaker
Yes, digital payment instrument company. Network agnostic. Network agnostic. Like what a PTM would have become. Absolutely, I would say like PTM. PTM is a good example, I would say, because it's also network agnostic and can scale infinitely.
00:33:07
Speaker
And you thought of doing it as peer-to-peer payments or... No, no, no. So, I'll tell you the genesis of it. So, while we were doing this merchandising business and it was profitable till the end, till the end in the sense, till I left, the business was good and what I was realising is increasingly these corporates are moving from physical goods to digital vouchers.
00:33:33
Speaker
Now, again what I saw was power, uprising power moving away from your hand into the hands of the consumer. Now, they want digital goods. What are digital goods? Digital goods are digital vouchers. Now, you have digital vouchers. Like an Amazon.
00:33:52
Speaker
Give pants and have clothes all came in now, but those time it was like all shopping store vouchers, lifestyle vouchers, all of that stuff. So what was happening is that those vouchers were becoming more and more popular and people were saying, don't give me bags, don't give me these phones, don't give me anything, give me a voucher and let me, let my employee
00:34:15
Speaker
let my channel partner choose the gift which they want to buy, choose the product which they want to buy. And that is how it started that we gave them, we started giving them digital. Earlier it was physical vouchers, which was printed on paper.
00:34:33
Speaker
And from there, so there is where my thoughts started. And when we would give these vouchers of PVR, give a shopper stop or lifestyle, I am not a consumer. I don't go to PVR. What would happen? The voucher would get somehow wasted, lost, exhausted. And if you say company would make money on vouchers, which are not redeemed, but the user is a bad experience.
00:34:58
Speaker
So I said what can be done, what can be, what can possibly be done for this and we went on to figure out is there a possibility to launch a digital card which is selected at select merchants, select merchants and can be used at any of these merchants.
00:35:19
Speaker
And here is where our journey started for Zaggle, that we will find an instrument which can replace all these instruments. So that was the West and we thought what is possible. We said Visa, there was no rupee at that time. Visa was a good scheme. We thought Visa would be great to go ahead and build a platform on. So Visa had a tagline called Visa Everywhere.
00:35:44
Speaker
So now, if Riza is everywhere, they said, we cannot give you restricted access. That means, your card being used only at select merchants. We said, this is not possible. Then we started talking to them, somehow convinced them of our business volumes, told them that this work opened a new line of business for them. And our first card was called Bong, which was box, office, movie, baranza.
00:36:13
Speaker
So the idea was box office movie balancer, you please go enjoy a movie, have popcorn, have XYZ, enjoy yourselves, get stress free and just use this card to pay, the card would be preloaded. Preloaded card would be prepaid, preloaded, you can go ahead, swipe it for tickets, swipe it for eating at PVR, INOX, XYZ and
00:36:37
Speaker
Wherever visa is accepted and the category is movies or entertainment, you can use this card. That's how we started. First year, 2011-2012, we did about 4 crores. And 4 crore is the GMV, like the GMV, gross transaction value. And we know about what is between 10 to 13,000 crores now.
00:37:05
Speaker
Wow and your earning would be like some like maybe 50 basis points or something like that. Other earning, other we would get about 2% plus some inactivity fee plus some commissions like that is what we get. But 2% is the total fee, some the bank would take some and
00:37:23
Speaker
So, total fee is 2.20 inclusive of history because earth is a corporate bin and out of which there is a bank fee which is there, there is a network fee which is done and then eventually we will get something like 1.8 or so back into our pockets.
00:37:41
Speaker
You would also need a bank to issue these cards. Visa was part of the equation. Yes, Visa was one part of it. Along with Visa, we went ahead and did the bank. The first bank was called RBL bank. We did Indusain, we did ES.
00:37:57
Speaker
We did all of other banks, then we got a processor called Yellam Engineer Software and Exports Company. Basically a card management system plus a switch attached to it which goes to Visa, which talks to Visa and is done like that. That's how overall this picture is built.
00:38:14
Speaker
This first year when you did 4 career, which year was this? It was 2012. So this could have been as a part of E&R only or did you set it up as a separate company? So we had set up Zaggle as a separate company and this was like turnover which was in Zaggle and we started building up E&R was doing same business of merchandise as they were doing in their brand stores, merchandising.
00:38:40
Speaker
All of that stuff, office supplies, anything the enterprise wanted, they didn't accept facilities. Now there was a lot of scope for facilities management as well, but we didn't go there because we didn't want to dilute. And margins, in any case, were much, much better in merchandising than office supplies or the inner facilities.
00:39:00
Speaker
and Zagal from there on started and I formally joined Zagal in 2016. I stepped out in 2014 from Iyantra then was sending out one institute over the show is city bank and he had joined me in 2000.
00:39:18
Speaker
Well, he was the CEO and MD of the company. So he was the one who was running it. I joined in 2016 for about 4-6 months and then again left the company and started a blockchain company called Zag Network. Zag Protocol or Zag Network as it is called today and it was a blockchain DeFi company based out of San Francisco with office in Singapore.
00:39:43
Speaker
So, I ran that for two years, sold it down. Ram was another guy who wanted to get into blockchain space. I wanted to come back again to India and that's how we sold that company to Ram. What was that? Was it like a blockchain company? Basically, in the trade finance DeFi space, decentralized finance space. So, let's say for example, any guard issued by any company,
00:40:12
Speaker
Now you have a card issued in US and the card is issued for let's say XYZ dollars. Now you want to use that card in India. Using our tech you would be able to do that. We will convert your US card into Indian rupees and allow the merchant to settle it.
00:40:33
Speaker
And then we created a wallet for the merchant in India, wallet for the merchant in US, like that. And it was not too much in cryptocurrency where we didn't have any cryptocurrency attached to it. It was more like a centralized blockchain basically. Yes, decentralized blockchain.
00:40:53
Speaker
They totally decentralized. That means you can do the settlement anywhere. It would be in India, it would be in the US, it would be anywhere. And that's how we started. It was doing very well. There was a lot of art merchants like Tim Naughton's or Starbucks or some of these companies which wanted to try that out. And it would have been great if we would have continued, if I had continued in that business, but I had to come back to.
00:41:20
Speaker
This was basically solving for cross-border payments. This was solving for cross-border payments, this was solving for redeemed money, the money which is more. So let's say in a card, when you use the card and there is 20, 40, 50 rupees left in the card, what do you do? You have no use, you throw the card. We were aggregating all of that and said you might have received XYZ cards. So now you want to use this card in Macy's in the US. So I'll give you a Macy's card.
00:41:50
Speaker
So you could have one, two, three, four, six, ten merchant funds and you wanted one single merchant card. I could do that also. Anything that everything was possible because we had created a marketplace, we had created the opportunity for anybody to be able to trade.
00:42:07
Speaker
and this is how we ended was all on blockchain so there was trust everybody could see the node and we were also building the something we did one project with NPCI for trade finance which was fantastic I think blockchain is a very exciting technology and we would love to explore more now in Zagal came back to Zagal late 2018-2019 and just tell me Zagal's journey from that fork like what was the year-on-year in GTV that and it remained in this
00:42:37
Speaker
space of cards like basically this was an employee expense card like a replacement to Sodex or something like that. No, so this happened much later, this happened much later, this happened in the year 2018-19. The replacement to Sodex. We have disrupted the market now.
00:42:57
Speaker
Now, if you really look at it, these are all old age. Now, we are way, way far ahead in terms of technology. As I said, the four tenets, global, scalable, technology, tech first, and some experience. So, we had the experience of merchandising, physical goods. So, this was digital goods. And the first three were there. So, what we started was from four crores. The second year was from 14 to 18. What was it like? Like I've worked
00:43:24
Speaker
I think we did about 650 crowds. But what was it? What was the business? 14 to 18. The business that you explained was essentially lost in 18.
00:43:37
Speaker
The business which I explained now is launched in 2018, before that it was basically prepaid cards. So, we would do a card for jewelry. So, it is called a jewelry card. So, lot of enterprises who give hold to their employees or their channel partners had this problem that there would be lot of leakage prefereting the system. So, I will give you a card which will only work, only means only work in jewelers.
00:44:04
Speaker
So it could be a TVC, be it any dweller you take, because Anna was Anna's PC. It will work at all dwellery shops and we would restrict it by MCC. But this was with that RBL and Visa. Yes, RBL and partly in the send also.
00:44:21
Speaker
So, what changed in 18th? It sounds the same thing only. In 18th, we took a decision that we will concentrate on technology first. So, while we are great, we are very good, we are selling very nice, distribution is fantastic.
00:44:40
Speaker
We would ideally want to become more technology oriented players and that's how we started being more technology oriented and started building software in front of the card. So our focus move to that we will have only two things. One is software, the other is a payment instrument. So software plus payment instrument is equal to Zaggle. So wherever you think software plus card can be put, we would be there.
00:45:10
Speaker
Give me examples of some use cases. Yes, so we take the example of office supplies. Today you do office supplies. What happens? Something or the other is always short in the office. You want the bundle of papers, it's not there. Today if you go on somebody for one, two, three, five pieces of bundles, nobody would come and give it to you. Either you should have different contracts or you would say buy it at the market price.
00:45:36
Speaker
Today, looking at the efficiency, people just go, they have a software which is put in, through which they can choose number of vendors, directly order whatever they want and use this payment instrument to make the payment instantaneously. We have made it completely seamless. Now, you don't have to think, you have to just see
00:45:55
Speaker
already on workflows, improvements, whatever IRRK, cost centers, everything has been made in technology and we are able to very quickly do this and close it off.
00:46:08
Speaker
So essentially like an admin person typically would not be able to place orders. He would create a purchase order. The purchase order would go to finance department. Finance department would clear the payment. That whole process of purchase order, finance approval, finance payment is getting digitized. The admin person has a payment instrument which is locked to only those things which he's approved to spend on.
00:46:34
Speaker
and he can just directly pay the vendor, it doesn't need to vote by then. It will have business rules where it will tell you that if it is Akshayi, he is allowed to spend so much money for these purposes and it is all set.
00:46:50
Speaker
So, there is no waiting. So, look at how efficiency is coming in. Imagine how to go through multiple. So, this is bringing in discipline in finance, discipline in ordering, discipline in receiving regards, improving efficiency, improving productivity all across.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's completely cutting off the handoffs. Otherwise, the admin guy would do a handoff and maybe you would hand off to procurement. Procurement would make P or they would hand off to finance. Finance would make some sort of payment, whatever terms decided, and then it would go back to the admin person. So all those handoffs are getting digitized.
00:47:27
Speaker
I am so glad you explained it much better than came in. It precisely means precisely, this is what we do, improve, increase and the efficiency, the time taken productivity, overall it is a breeze when you look at the software.
00:47:44
Speaker
So we started first implementing it in the marketing department. So all the rewards we digitized, now we give them a software. They can onboard all their dealers that it is integrated to their ERP, which will read how much have they, how much material is sold, which SKU has got sold. Depending on that, the reward is decided. Both that automatically all the payments are settled.
00:48:11
Speaker
Madeline issued a card or it's like a virtual card? If they want a physical card, we can give them but we prefer a virtual card because cost is less. More screenable cost is less and it is much, much easier for anybody to do it. So that's the process which we are doing today. We started with marketing, we said because all the rewards just to understand this better. So E-stealer would get like a proper 16 digit.
00:48:57
Speaker
It is virtual and if he wants physical, he can just opt for physical. And what happened is with that particular thing, we were able to start ramping up very fast. And in 2020, when if you see COVID hit, we thought our business will go for a hard toss.
00:49:06
Speaker
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
00:49:19
Speaker
Because they were dependent on sales, the rate of promotion was the maximum. Yes, the rate of promotion, one was employee rewards, the other was total rewards and general incentives. And the third thing was that we were not fully there, but we were looking at meal reimbursements.
00:49:39
Speaker
We were looking at tax reimbursements. It could be some other kind of tax reimbursement. So what happens is for some of these companies today, if you look at it in GST,
00:49:52
Speaker
you today swipe the card at the hotel. At the hotel you are not giving your company's GST number to the hotel guy. So, hotel guy when he is making the bill, he is making the bill and giving it to you and he is following his GST. Your company is not able to get the credit.
00:50:12
Speaker
So, what has happened is effectively you have lost so much of credit in the process that your employee has not used your company's GST. Then we started integrating. So, there are three main drivers for this entire digitization. One is demonetization which happened. Second was GST which again happened and the third was COVID.
00:50:36
Speaker
So these three triggers, as you may call earthquakes, tsunami and storm is high, how you know they were there and this changed everything, everything means everything for the entire Indian economy. Today you have made some... Help me understand that the GST, we did finish that. Now does the hotel get the company's GST then? So what happens is if you go to Iran, so if you are let's say you are belonging to Microsoft,
00:51:02
Speaker
you can in the app Microsoft GST number would be already loaded.
00:51:08
Speaker
So when you make the payment, when you make the payment, you just tell them that I am making the booking from this company, from the company and already the information which gets transferred there would be with the GST number. Other is, in case you are making it outside of the app, you still have GST number handy that you are able to tell them that this is my GST number. It helps save so much of time.
00:51:32
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And if this happened, then a lot of reimbursements were there. Like for example, children's books or XYZ, I spent on few and I spent on mobile, spent on something else. Traveling or taking clients out for a meal. Clients out. So I need to do a reimbursement. So we built in a full fledged software suite. So our philosophy again was
00:51:59
Speaker
software in a penguin instrument. So wherever we could marry these two is how we move. So we moved from a CMO, chief marketing officer or a chief sales officer, to a CFO, to CFO. CFO, now the CBO, which is chief procurement officer.
00:52:20
Speaker
That's how we have moved in this last few years from a CMO to a PPO. And eventually if you look at it, we would go and cover the corporate market 360. I have several clarifications I need. Yes. Say this Microsoft employee took out clients for a dinner. So he would need a physical card, right? Yeah, he could have a physical card, he could have a digital card. Would you pay with a digital card in a restaurant?
00:52:47
Speaker
Today, if you look at most of these companies, most of the restaurants today have either a QR code. Which would be UPI, right? You can say from the card, you could move money, from the card, you could actually do a QR code payment. So, parts are able to read yours. Because see, everything is becoming seamless today. There is no issue, no problem in today making a payment and then moving to bank also is possible.
00:53:16
Speaker
Let's say if they have let's say Bharat Pay QR code. They have Bharat Pay QR code, right? And our system, our card would be able to read Bharat QR and make the paper. That is how it is done. Because if you look at it today, it is 100% portable. That means you are able to port anything to anything. So there is no restriction per se. Today, either you use a number or you use a currency note or you use whatever it is digital.
00:53:45
Speaker
Most of it. And if they have a physical card, they use the physical card, if it is a digital, they just do it a year ago. Sometimes they log on to the payment gateway of that particular restaurant or hotel and pay it through that. Or if it is a QR, they pay through QR. If there is more or less the spend of payments is what they are able to
Adapting to COVID and Future Plans
00:54:04
Speaker
do. Got it. Now tell me Covid. You said three events, which really? Yes. You said events, DEWAD, DSTA and Covid. Tell me about Covid.
00:54:11
Speaker
So, COVID was March 22, 2020, the government announced that we don't have a complete, whatever, lockdown. So, we were completely unprepared to the highest extent, though we had started virtual cards and the idea of doing virtual cards was more because of saving costs than to digitize, to be very honest. That was what was our idea.
00:54:39
Speaker
Raspi, Spachas, Rube, Bajado is more important than going anywhere, right? Now then, Taggle was like self-funded. We had invested some money earlier, but more or less it was self-funded and debt-funded, I would say.
00:54:56
Speaker
So there was debt, but otherwise more or less a beautiful, most capital efficient built company. Of course, not by choice, but by chance. I think you already, essentially you didn't need to burn for customer acquisition. Most companies burn money for customer acquisition.
00:55:18
Speaker
Damn right means all these, that is how it helped us. And when COVID happened, we realized what is it. So, everywhere it was that jobs will be lost, this will happen, that will happen. You wouldn't believe what I did Akshay. First thing I did there along with my senior management team was to sit and we announced a COVID bonus.
00:55:44
Speaker
On March 22, the Covid bonus was announced. March 27, the money was in everybody's account. Either they got cards loaded with money or if we were not able to reach them with a virtual card or a physical card or some other kind, we transferred the money to their bank account.
00:56:04
Speaker
And why, what was the reason? The reason was very simply that a lot of them who were possibly coming from not exactly to the families would have issues. They may have to move to their home towns. They may not come back very fast. So, if they have to buy such a particular expense, anything is there to be announced a bonus to everybody. And the first bonus which was announced was basically to buy
00:56:30
Speaker
on stuff related to work connectivity. Better Wi-Fi. We gave everybody laptops. So in a span of about, I would say 60 hours, we were able to laptop everybody.
00:56:49
Speaker
Everybody means everybody and it was good. It was all again thinking ahead, thinking ahead. We were able to do this beautifully and because we announced bonus, what happened is lot of people who thought whether their jobs will be there or not were stunned. They said, wow, here is a company which is already thinking of us for future and paying us the money in advance.
00:57:13
Speaker
giving us a bonus in advance and thinking about it. So that lifted the morals of the company a lot. That time we were like about 150 odd people and it was like super mean super mean super great for us and that went that created a lot of positivity in and out and that helped us to then the second challenge was
00:57:37
Speaker
suddenly we saw that some of these companies were asking for demos on Saturdays and Sundays as well. That companies who didn't work on Friday to sell for one day started working on Saturday and Sunday and say that we want you were in touch with us three months back why don't you give and suddenly we were doing about 40 to 60 to 100 demos a day.
00:58:02
Speaker
So, anybody who will call your Puneet will say, sorry, we are busy in a demo, sorry, we are busy in a demo, sorry, we are busy in a demo. We decide our conversion ratio went up beautifully, beautifully from let's say 10-15% to upwards of 40%. If we touched let's say 100 clients, eventual conversion would be about 35-40 clients.
00:58:26
Speaker
which was great for us. Great means great for us. And that happened because people realized that why were we postponing digital? There was no more. Everything suddenly is becoming digital. People had worries. No work from home. We are not in our work from home. Now everybody was forced to work from home. See, sir, if it was made a mind block or near that work from home, what would they be doing? And today you said everybody has to work from home.
00:58:57
Speaker
Wait, imagine the difference what happened and that helped us a lot. It means big win for us. The tailwinds still today are extremely strong.
00:59:09
Speaker
extremely strong and this in done is eventually going to digitize entire India and what is what I see for a company it is zero cost digitization they don't need to pay anything they need to be yes they need not pay anything it is paid per use people as you well onboard users you pay as you use you pay and it's not really paying anything that intercharge fees are being borne by the
00:59:37
Speaker
We charge them for the software, we charge them for per user and platform. Why should we lose out on that opportunity? To make money, that's why we are highly profitable. Now, one of the very few fintech companies in India, which is profitable, holds a world over which is profitable. So, what do you charge? 99 rupees per user per month.
01:00:01
Speaker
So one user equals one virtual card, basically. Yeah. So because we give the software, card is a separate instrument, software for when to do this entire workflows, all of that is the software. Oh, got it. Got it. Cool. What is the way in which you do your lead generation? Like you said 100 companies that you give a demo to 40 will convert. So where are those 100 companies coming from? Is it a feet on street sales course or is it Google ads, SEO?
01:00:29
Speaker
So I would say part digital, part tuck inside sense and part freedom suite. Combination of all these three. What is the size of companies that you target? Large enterprise. We have less than 250, more than 250. Less than 250 is all digital, no physical. This thing given above 250.
01:00:51
Speaker
Digital as well as if they want us to go and visit them physically, we will do that. Basically, they are going to dedicate an account manager if it is. Yeah, they will get an account manager, support manager, customer, success support guys, how they would get. And once they get a customer success manager, any queries if they have, we will be able to do. I read somewhere that you are planning to do an IPO just to be with it.
01:01:17
Speaker
candid with you, we are looking at various sources, now we are exploring various possibilities of raising money and one of the ways is IPO and IPO has been a great opportunity to share the wealth with shareholders.
01:01:33
Speaker
good thing for us is that we have so many of these companies who are already our customers and it will be a great opportunity for them to actually see their company home they use listed on the market. We are not really to be very candid. It's not that we have filed the DRHB but we are exploring the options. One of the options is on the table. One of the options. So why do you need facts?
01:01:58
Speaker
Now, you have a very good question. Profit will come, it can take a while. The reason of fund requirement is basically to cater to geographical expansion. Second is on the product per se. We want to take the product to the next level.
01:02:18
Speaker
Then we are also launching a credit card very soon. For the launch of the credit card and actually to put that product out in the market, we possibly may require some interim funding. Now that is the reason that we are looking at funds.
01:02:33
Speaker
Sir, the next step in your roadmap is to do a new bank for enterprises. Absolutely, we will become a full-fledged digital bank and I am telling you, digital bank licenses will be thrown open subject to some conditions very soon. RBI, to be very honest, is doing a phenomenal job. In my opinion, when I look at RBI, I see a startup.
01:03:01
Speaker
Because the way they are thinking and the number of actions which they have taken in the last few months and years is phenomenal. Account agreed, proving prepared, you know, in credit card now, in BFC to issue credit cards. You know, who said you can't get credit? It is, I am giving you money.
01:03:20
Speaker
It's not that I am taking money from you. I am giving you money. Why should you stop me from giving you money? Just think about it. Today, I want to give money to Akshay. Why should anybody interfere in that process? And for what? For what? The question is, if they say that you will give money and then you will exploit them, exploitation happens because concentration happens. If concentration does not happen, exploitation will not happen.
01:03:51
Speaker
So as we democratize that much power you are spreading and that is what blockchain said that the number of nodes you have you know it's a completely distributed ledger technology and that is what would help you not allow any bad apples to corrupt or game the system.
01:04:11
Speaker
Think about 5 years down the road. Now you have, I know Akshay, I know what he spends. I tell you, do not worry about money. Do not worry about money. Whatever you are getting, I will give you 10% extra. Just allow me to use, of course, with all your approvals, to use the money efficiently.
01:04:37
Speaker
Akshay wants to move the bank, Akshay is unable to move the banks. We will get Akshay much better read from some other bank.
01:04:48
Speaker
He has to pay EMI for the car, we will get the best insurer, best EMI guy to give him much better rate. How do we call? If you really ask me Abhishek, it is the freedom days. Today we are struggling to get freedom. Freedom from finance. Ultimately the world has to move to F.O.F.
01:05:10
Speaker
The freedom of finance is going to be a new buzzword in coming year. This is again life coming full circle. What you were doing with SSL, you were collecting number of checks with a lot of HNI's and then negotiating. That gave you that bargaining power and negotiation power to give them better returns. Yes, yes, yes. Very well put. I actually missed it.
01:05:42
Speaker
This is the moment you are able to do that and these are not like I send it to you, I will send you to Mars. It is something which you can see it happen right now, right in few days. All the government has to do is just open deck.
01:05:58
Speaker
What I love about what you're planning to do with the card is that these traditional credit cards have some rewards which are hardly relevant for me. But if I was to get a card which would tell me on your Google Suite subscription, you can get a lower price. And because you know where I'm spending my money, so you could actually optimize for what kind of rewards I get.
01:06:19
Speaker
That would be a pretty massive one. Absolutely. I am a simple thinker. You look at two concepts and one is you are marrying banking to accounting. You are marrying much to finance.
01:06:33
Speaker
So, you are doing commerce and you are doing finance, you are marrying both of them and telling them that I will get you the same service with that cheaper price because I have the ability to aggregate. So, the aggregational business is a huge business and that is what we would, freedom of finance will give you this ability to trade.
Vision for Financial Freedom and Zaggle's Future
01:06:54
Speaker
This would not really be a consumer card. The focus would be to help businesses. To be very honest, it is going to be a business card and eventually we will launch a consumer card.
01:07:06
Speaker
What we will do in the consumer card, you will be shocked. So we have a plan, we are working on the plan and in some time or the other, we will be able to bring it out very quickly and we will tell you what on the consumer card you will be able to do. We hate too many things here, we hate too many things. This credit card would also support UPI payments, like you can scan a QR code. Okay.
01:07:33
Speaker
That is given today, that is what you call par for the course is how it is. Like my ICI bank, that doesn't support UPI. Like I have to use my account balance if I want to make a UPI payment instead of using my credit limit to make a UPI payment. That depends on which processor you are using. If you are using a processor who supports that system, it would be so you can easily look at the system here. But today if I have to make a GST payment,
01:08:03
Speaker
They say, no, you cannot make by credit card. Why can't I make it by credit card? You know what? You will take 1% on government payments. It is 10 rupees or 15 rupees or XYZ. Allow your more credit. Bring more money into circulation. Create that circular economy where you are able to create more money. Use the Kenshin theory of money supply.
01:08:27
Speaker
Like the F squared theory is what we have to put in. We have to go back to basic fundamentals with the first principles. How do you want better handwriting? Better handwriting means you need to get better indicators. How do you get better indicators? You need availability of information. How do you get availability of information? Can you tell me what is your current revenue? Can you share some numbers? My current revenue numbers for this year and March ending would be anywhere between 350 to 400 curves.
01:08:57
Speaker
Okay. This is not GTV, this is your own morning. No, this is net revenue. We don't count GTV. GTV does not matter to us. Yeah, that's a vanity. That's vanity. So we take net revenue. Net revenue is like whatever interchange we get is what we take. And we have what you call about 2000-odd active customers with us. Then the third thing I would say is that we are
01:09:22
Speaker
Each and every year, this is our third year of profitability and we are hitting roughly about 50 crores, give or take a couple of crores of a vita is how I would say what we have done and all this with very little debt and very little equity. Imagine what we can do with growth capital.
01:09:44
Speaker
That is why what we are taking now is growth capital, either through PEA or private equity or IPO. The whole idea is to open the shackles for the rocket launch. And an African expansion that you want to do, you want to go outside India, like you want to go to the Middle East or you want to go to the West?
01:10:07
Speaker
See what I get here, 99 rupees in India, I will get 9.99 in the US. The only thing is we have to adopt to the market at Rome of general, is how we have to go. So we have to just do a little bit, we can spend some time, we can advertise ourselves in the US. And then I think we are good to go. We have good software, we have good ability, we have a decent understanding of the market. So just that we have to dig in.
01:10:36
Speaker
and dig in and work harder and harder to be able to create an impact on any market for that matter. US has a very mature FinTech market. You would probably have to do a lot of cash burn to acquire customers there. See, it would be tough to answer to be very candid. If you really look at it, it is a really immature market in some sense.
01:10:58
Speaker
and old world, old, completely old world. Mobile in US, the option of mobile is next to negligible in terms of using for financial transactions. So you have to see how you are able to bring in. It's a long journey. It's a hard journey. It's a very world market that I agree with you. It's a highly digital market. So you really wouldn't have so much of scope to create digitization because it's already digital. But then some loopholes when we have come to amazing.
01:11:28
Speaker
And that brings us to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to the show? I'd love to hear your feedback about it. Do you have your own startup ideas? I'd love to hear them. Do you have questions for any of the guests that you heard about in the show? I'd love to get your questions and pass them on to the guests. Write to me at adatthepodium.in. That's adatthepodium.in.