Flipkart veteran Anil Goteti launches Gen Z and Millenial-focussed fintech startup

The Bengaluru-headquartered Scapia was in stealth mode over the last year and was launched on Thursday. It offers a co-branded credit card and an app for customers to turn their daily expenses into rewards. These rewards turn into Scapia coins which can be utilised to book hotels, and flights online.

The card is presently accepted in India and over 150 countries and is powered by the global card firm Visa.

“The onboarding is completely paperless and a customer will be able to get the card virtually within 10 minutes and the physical card will be delivered. The KYC (Know-your-customer) is also done instantly online,” Goteti said.

What does Scapia offer?

Scapia offers 20 percent reward on every hotel stay and flight booked from within the app. Scapia coins are convertible with 5 Scapia Coins equalling 1 rupee. It is also promising that there will be no joining fee, zero forex markup on international spends and a no-cost EMI option under the offering Travel Now, Pay Later.

“Scapia is more than a credit card. It is a commitment to making travel accessible for everyone who dreams of seeing the world. It’s a new way to reward young Indian travellers,” he added.

Scapia’s revenue model is two-fold: the firm will be earning a percentage of commission from hotels and airlines’ when booked through Scapia’s app and will be earning a commission from the co-partnered bank for getting more customers. Federal Bank will be responsitble for the credit and underwriting.

In fact, Moneycontrol has also learnt that the firm has also raised a funding round from Matrix Partners and other top venture capital firms as per data sourced from Tofler.

The firm presently has employed around 40 people and is planning to hire more in the coming days.

“We are hiring across teams, we are looking for employees who can add more value in terms of product development and engineering and finance,” Goteti said.

Goteti’s journey

Goteti joined Flipkart in 2012 as the senior vice president of Flipkart heading the mobiles & home and furniture categories at Flipkart. He then quit the e-commerce firm in 2020 to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams.

In 2021, Goteti founded Protonn, a platform built for independent professionals like lawyers and graphic designers to launch their businesses online or create content.

Protonn raised around $9 million from investors Matrix Partners, 021 Capital and Tanglin Venture Partners and prominent angel investors like Binny Bansal, Flipkart chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar, and Kunal Shah of Cred.

However, Goteti shut down its business and returned the capital to its investors in 2022 as it was not able to find the right product-market fit (PMF) and expand in the market.

“When I was in Flipkart I learnt a lot. In fact, the learnings from Flipkart have given me the confidence to run something on my own. During covid I launched a company called Protonn, it didn’t go well but it is also part of the learning,” Goteti said.

Moving from an SVP to a CEO has been challenging and rewarding Goteti said.

“From an SVP to a CEO it has not been very easy…but not every time you will be offered everything in a platter. Flipkart was a great brand and I had that comfort but now I’m ready to risk and I want to pursue this to the best,” Goteti said.

Scapia’s plans ahead

Scapia is launched at a time when the whole fintech ecosystem, especially the credit ecosystem is under tight scrutiny.

In fact, Scapia’s direct rival Niyo is facing a slowdown after the regulator ordered its partnered bank the State Bank of Mauritius (SBM)’s Indian subsidiary to stop processing any international remittances under the liberalised remittance scheme (LRS) after discovering “material supervisory concerns”.

The finance ministry in May issued a notification stating that international credit cards would also be covered under the liberalised remittance scheme (LRS) – meaning a TCS of 20 percent would apply to credit cards as well.

After facing a backlash, on May 19, another clarification was issued stating that payments made using international credit and debit cards up to Rs 7 lakh shall be excluded from LRS.

“RBI’s regulations are much-needed and that is why we have partnered with a very well-established Federal Bank…The TCS will not affect us as of now and even if it goes beyond we will be very transparent on what the regulations are,” Goteti said.

India is a credit-starved market and there is a huge opportunity, Goteti said.

Recent data from the Reserve Bank of India shows that credit card transactions have gone up significantly.  With 25 crore card transactions for merchant payments in April this year, credit cards have overtaken debit cards. In terms of the value of transactions, credit cards stood at Rs 1.3 lakh crore against Rs 53,000 crore for debit cards.

And experts believe that there will be a lot of co-branded credit cards that will be coming up in the coming days. In fact, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp Ltd (IRCTC) and HDFC Bank, announced the launch of a co-branded travel credit card known as the IRCTC HDFC Bank Credit Card.

“There is only 5 percent market penetration by all players put together. The  addressable market is huge and we will be able to bite a large pie of that market,” Goteti said.