Democratizing access to finance | Bala Parthasarathy @ MoneyTap

Founder Thesis

Our guest today is an achiever in more ways than one. Born and brought up in Chennai in a humble household, he pursued his studies from the prestigious IIT, Madras campus.

Well, he tells us that he wasn’t a risk-taker or had an entrepreneurial side to him as a kid but loved to travel and explore new places, people and communities.

In this episode of Founder Thesis, we are talking to Bala Parthasarathy, co-founder and CEO of MoneyTap - a fintech consumer lending startup. MoneyTap launched India’s first app-based credit line impacting Indian consumers across 50+ cities who struggled with access to affordable credit options.

Bala’s entrepreneurial foundation was laid when he went for a summer job during his IIT days and got into market research to earn some side cash. After completing his engineering from IIT, he went abroad to complete higher education from the University of California where he along with his batchmates deep dived into the entrepreneurial culture and started a company.

Having no prior fintech background, MoneyTap was an uncharted territory for him when he started this in 2015 with two of his friends. He worked day in, day out to reach where he is reached today and continues to hustle.

He shares interesting insights from taking a loan to buy the ticket to go abroad for higher education, learning different languages, hitchhiking across the Sahara, his travel voyages to the remarkable lessons from building MoneyTap. Tune in to listen to this exciting conversation with Bala Parthasarathy.

Key Insights from the episode:

1. Learning through travel experiences.
2. Being adventures and taking challenges head-on.
3. Shaping the Future of Fintech.
4. Lessons on funding from the lens of a venture capitalist.