Mobikwik CEO on the company’s Technology-first approach

During his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave fresh impetus to digital transactions by exhorting Indians to say "Yes to digital payment, no to cash.” One company rooting for this message is Gurugram-based Mobikwik. The digital payment startup plans to facilitate $20 billion worth of transactions through its payment gateway business within 18 months. And the Prime Minister’s words were just the encouragement it needed.

“We are amongst the top three payment gateways (PG) in India and have seen our Total Payment Volume (TPV) and gross revenues triple in the last 12 months. This is because we have the most sophisticated tech stack for payments in mobile apps clocking > 94 percent success rates. We have now $20 billion in annual payment volume as target for our PG business to hit the number 2 position in India’s PG market share,” claimed Upasana Taku, co-founder, Mobikwik.

Wealth Management going digital

The company is using a technology-first approach to offer an alternative to physical banking on its mobile platform. It recently launched KwikSave, in partnership with Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management, to encourage youngsters to invest in mutual funds without worrying about lock-in periods or time taken to access money upon redemption.

Going forth, Taku expects more people to invest in gold and equity digitally. When this happens, they are likely to seek an app that gives them the best user experience and allows them to connect their bank accounts instantly – which could be another area for Mobikwik to foray into.

While Mobikwik is optimistic about the potential of digital banking, majority of Indians still prefer to do financial transactions physically. Hence, the company has been focusing more on wealth management since last year.

“This focus will help us reach out to users in the tier-2 and 3 cities. We want to add a number of first-time investors. Though a majority of Indians are unaware of the nuances of digital banking and insurance, the scenario is fast-changing with smartphone and internet penetration,” Taku explained.

Security Paramount

One challenge that most apps face is leveraging technology to securely manage save payment details of users for faster repeat checkouts. This also helps in ensuring recurring payments, especially through subscription model. At the same time, the company has to abide by data privacy laws.

Mobikwik claims that, as a payment gateway, it is regularly subjected to stringent PCI-DSS audits, which have the highest level of security for protecting its customer’s valuable payment data. “We securely manage over 94 million unique cards, which are saved on our payment gateway for faster repeat checkouts. This includes 20M credit cards, which is approx. 50 percent of all credit cards issued in India,” Taku adds.

She added that the company broke even on its PG business in April 2019, and reported a profit of INR 70 lakh in June 2019. It is now aggressively adding new merchants in high growth verticals such as e-commerce, fintech, travel, telecom, food, education and gaming.