The Merchant Payments Pioneer | Ashneer Grover @ BharatPe

Founder Thesis

In November 2016, demonetisation was announced by the Indian government and the market witnessed an immediate surge in digital payments. And this was further propelled by the United Payments Interface (UPI).

While fintech giants like Paytm and PhonePe were the flagbearers of this movement, BharatPe has been looking to change the way SMEs view payments in India.

In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Ashneer Grover, Co-founder and CEO, BharatPe, takes us through his amazing journey. Ashneer is an alumnus of prestigious IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad. Post that, he has worked for eminent companies like Kotak Investment Banking and American Express. He moved on to serve as the CFO of Grofers and this is when the desire to set up his venture started to set in.

With an elaborate experience in the finance domain, he started BharatPe in 2018 along with Shashvat Nakrani with the vision to make financial inclusion a reality for Indian merchants, which at present has reached more than 4 million merchants with its interoperable UPI QR code and processes around 60 million transactions a month.

Tune in to this episode to hear Ashneer talk about how this soon-to-be unicorn is on its way to building a robust and easy to use fintech platform that empowers the SMEs in India.

Key takeaways:

• Feet on street business model vs digital acquisition.
• Importance of branding for a fintech venture.
• Take on regulatory guidelines by RBI.