The Exchanges

Q Uh, Bipin would like to start with your journey before founding MobiQuick, right, right after your graduation. So, so what are the things and events that led you to founding of MobiQuick?

A Look, I mean, I think, you know, uh, when you pass out of IIT, uh, there are only a few parts, uh, that are available. And I think those are pretty well researched and, uh, written, uh, on, uh, on media. Uh, so, uh, You know, I took the path of taking up a job, which is actually not one of the most popular jobs, but I come from a family, you know, where I was the eldest son, and two more siblings younger than me, and we come from fairly sort of, you know, modest background, and we, before I started working, so the first thing that I had to do was to actually find a job, and I took up working at Intel, and actually, you know, I started working when the world was going through a crisis. It just happened, you know, September 11 attacks had happened. The economy at that time, the world economy, the US economy had gone through a fair bit of a recession. So I started at Intel. I love chip design. I loved hardware engineering, being an electrical engineer, and started working in Bangalore. That was my first job, basically a design engineer. So, you know, when you design chips, you write code, which represent transistors, gates, electronics, et cetera. So that was the specialization with which I started my first job. Uh, I had a great time, uh, at Intel. Uh, it's a great company to, uh, you know, start your career with. It's, it's one of the biggest companies in the world today. And so…

AI assessment note: “first thing that I had to do was to actually find a job, and I took up working at Intel”

Q Uh, Bipin, could you please share the revenue numbers of MobiQuick? How has the journey been on revenue, on profit, on growth?

A Sure. So as a company, you know, MobiQuick has always been focused on, uh, growth. Uh, but we knew that at some point we also have to, uh, start, uh, generating profitability. And the first step towards that is, uh, before you become profitable at a beta level or a path level, you have to become profitable at a unit economics level, which is, And the common parlance known as contribution margin, which means that the revenue that you make versus all the variable costs, uh, you know, do you start making money on every transaction, on every business that you do every day? So, um, we achieved that milestone sometime back in, in, in, in September month, we first time hit contribution margin profitability. Uh, and since then, you know, we've maintained, uh, a significant growth, uh, while sort of hitting, uh, and maintaining contribution level profitability. In fact, in FYI, our revenue was 300 crores, uh, which grew to, in FYI, grew to 540 crores. So almost like a 86% kind of a growth. And within that, our flagship consumer payments business, uh, grew 144%. Uh, which is all, which is already, you know, at a very big scale. Uh, and the new business that we are building, which is buy now, pay later, uh, grew 840%, uh, in, um, the space of one year, uh, showing that, you know, that we are continuing to focus, uh, on growth. Um, but while doing this growth, we also became profitable. In…

AI assessment note: “our revenue was 300 crores, uh, which grew to, in FYI, grew to 540 crores.”

Q And Bipin, if you could, uh, describe, right, so the initial vision was not to transform the The digital payments landscape as you are doing it right now. It was just, you know, to solve a specific problem that you started with. How could people do an online recharge?

A Yeah. So I think, you know, um, I always knew that the problem is obviously the problem that I faced personally, right? I'm, I'm the analyst, uh, in my family and, you know, I have two younger siblings, especially a younger brother. So not used to doing Any work at home. And, um, you know, I would, uh, tell him to do this and go get that, et cetera. But when I came back in 2006, seven, back to Delhi, then, you know, my younger siblings weren't at home. They were either studying or working. So I, uh, you know, my mom used to say, okay, go get this 50 rupees, a hundred rupees, 200 rupees, top up for my phone. Like, what is this? You know, you have to go down and give cash and the shop is open. And then it takes like 15 minutes of, You know, time, energy wasted. Why can't this be done online? So that's how the problem statement which I was facing personally, you know, transformed into some form of an idea. Then I studied that, you know, India has a lot of people, you know, who are on prepaid, still do. Um, so, and the market, the mobile phone market was going very fast. So I said, why not make a website which will do this? But then, you know, uh, I had a little bit more foresight, uh, to say that, you know, obviously this is only one use case. This has to develop into something bigger. And so at the back of the mind payments was definitely there in terms of a larger payments play,…

AI assessment note: “that's how the problem statement which I was facing personally, you know, transformed into some form of an idea”

Q If you can share with other entrepreneurs, right? What kept you going for 13 long years and you are still really excited about what lives next? Uh, what, what has been that?

A Well, you know, I just like, I think, you know, there's been a lot of times Let's say crisis moments or times when you think what is going on, right? I mean, this is, is this enough, right? Uh, good times as well as bad times. I think what's going, kept us going is one is the space that we are in has evolved really continuously, and it has evolved, of course, to a point that, you know, two years ago, what it was and what it is in FinTech. Is already, you know, when I talk about the broader FinTech ecosystem, it's become far bigger. So as a technology enthusiast, as a product enthusiast, uh, you know, even if I had to ever do something else, I don't know anything else except FinTech. And within MobiQuick, there is so much innovation possible. I, we started with payments, wallet, UPI, The experiences, credit, and, you know, just take credit, digital credit, and that's itself is a fascinating opportunity, small ticket, high ticket. Then there is insurance, well, for which I don't have enough engineers, and I don't have enough, you know, mental bandwidth to actually say what to do in that space. So, uh, I think the space in the market is, uh, has kept us, uh, going and the fact that company Uh, you know, there's a certain belief that, you know, we are destined to become big, uh, because we have survived many, many different kind of crisis situations. Um, uh, in 2019, sort of, early…

AI assessment note: “what's going, kept us going is one is the space that we are in”

Q pay, uh, Google pay, and so many others, but, but you have been able to build a niche for, for yourself, right? So, so how do you, uh, you know, build that a mental model or how do you convey that to entrepreneurs? Because it's very single-minded today, right? In this ecosystem that you have to be the market leader to raise the maximum, you know, just kill the competition.

A Yeah. I think, you know, I think I don't agree with it. Uh, I personally don't agree with it. And you, Have to, for this to happen, you have to believe that history, ah, you know, lessons from the economy, and you have to look at the, what happened, for example, in banking space, or in telecom space, or a few other, you know, spaces, right? Um, just like, you know, you wouldn't have one bank, you wouldn't have one fintech, you wouldn't have one UPI app. You wouldn't have one UPI app for customers. What you see today, for example, is let's say, obviously some people take early lead, invest more, have more capital. They can require more customers, give more cashbacks, et cetera. But obviously that is not sustainable. Everybody has to figure out a business model at the next level, whether you do credit or become a super app or something like that. At the end of the day, Right. You have to figure out what kind of a business you want to build. Market leadership in B to C or B to B, whether it is B to B to B, I don't think it makes a difference. If you do not have the advantage of basically eliminating completely the competition and taking all the profits away, which means become a monopoly like IRCTC. If you don't have that, then that market leadership is not very useful because, you know, you will actually Get more efficient people doing the same thing that you are doing in a much …

AI assessment note: “I personally don't agree with it. And you, Have to, for this to happen, you have to believe that history”

Q It was how much bigger round and what round would that be?

A Yeah. So it was, uh, I think total of about 50, sixty million dollars. And, uh, one of them actually, it was not just a term sheet. It was actually a signed shareholder agreement, SHA. So the agreement is signed and just the wiring was left, wiring of money was left. But then, you know, this was on, I remember the date, this was on March ninth, we signed. And from March 10th onward, the markets in us started going down significantly. And, um, so the investor pulled out, uh, you know, because there was a lot of uncertainty at that time. Um, and, uh, so, yeah, I mean, I think that year, 2020 was a, so you know, you remember the lockdowns and everything. So the consumption went down and obviously credit became much more challenging. Forget about giving more credit. It was about recovering what you had already given out in the market. And so with funding gone and, um, not coming and then, you know, credit, Um, uh, collections, uh, costs and, uh, going into crazy numbers. Uh, those six to nine months starting from March, April to sort of, I would say, end of the year were very, very tough. Extremely tough. Tough to the extent that, you know, like we had to literally think of everything that we have to do, right? Uh, to make sure that the company survives and then grows from there. Even though we had good scale at that time, Uh, we've already lost fifty million dollars of revenue, bu…

AI assessment note: “it was, uh, I think total of about 50, sixty million dollars.”