Lalit Keshre, co-founder and CEO of investment platform Groww, believes that the India story has immense potential for fintechs that are making financial services accessible through technology.
In a conversation with Chandra R Srikanth for CNN News18’s Bits to Billions, Keshre said that in his view, multiple billion-dollar companies will emerge in the financial services space owing to the huge market that is yet to be captured.
"People in India need financial services. It is a basic need like roti, kapda, makaan (food, clothing, shelter) and financial services," said Keshre.
In response to Zerodha founder and CEO Nithin Kamath’s views that India’s fintech user base is just 10-15 crore, Keshre said that while he has no response to Kamath’s views specifically, he believes that 30-40 crore of the Indian middle and lower middle class can invest at least Rs 100 in mutual funds each month.
Keshre added that in his view, the success of large financial services players too is reflective of the potential.
"I have a slightly different opinion. Large players like HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finance have a market cap of Rs 8 lakh crore and Rs 4.20 lakh crore, respectively. India’s financial services is 30-40 percent of Nifty50 companies. Who else are they serving if not India?"
"We are here for the long term, and we believe in the India story," he added.
Groww and Keshre’s journey to a unicorn
Groww was founded in 2016 by four former Flipkart executives –Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal. The platform helps users invest in stocks, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, IPOs, US stocks, futures and options, fixed deposits and gold.
The startup counts Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global as well as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as its investors and is valued at $3 billion after raising $83 million in its Series E funding round in October 2021.
Keshre said that his beginnings, however, were humble as he revealed that he hails from Lepa, a small village in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone district. His parents, Keshre added, are stoic to his growth story.
"My parents are from a small village, my father is a farmer. They are stoic (to Groww’s story). For them what matters is that I create some positive impact. They don’t care about money and still live a very simple life. They are happy with it," Keshre said.
He further detailed the beginning of his journey from Lepa to one of India’s top institutions Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay) and later to the startup hub Bengaluru.
"I grew up with my grandparents in Khargone. Luckily my grandfather got me an admission to the only English medium school there which had started with our batch. I was the 42nd student in the school. After 12th grade I gave the entrance and got into IIT-B," he revealed.
He always had entrepreneurship on his mind, even while working at one of India's top tech startups. While joining Flipkart in 2013, Keshre had a roadmap in place.
"I knew that I will work with Flipkart for only two years, but I stretched that to three years. All four of us (co-founders) were at Flipkart when the company was taking off. But the decision to move out and start up was based on our personal timing," he said.
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