MobiKwik to increase fintech play; aims at profits by 2017

Gurgaon-based mobile wallet firm MobiKwik expects to turn profitable by mid-2017 and plans to diversify revenue streams by offering financial products like loans and mutual funds, a senior executive said.
"We are looking at diversifying our revenue streams and our first goal is to be profitable on a monthly basis by middle of 2017," MobiKwik founder and chief executive Bipin Preet Singh told PTI.
The firm looks to expand its financial services offerings and has started entering into partnerships with banks and financial institutions for the same.
MobiKwik is partnering with non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) to offer micro-lending to its users, and is also looking at launching a mutual fund portfolio going forward, he added.

The company is also focussing on the offline category, and is looking to expand the merchants on board from 50,000 currently to nearly five million by next year, Singh said.
Last year, MobiKwik activated mobile payments for brick-and-mortar stores such as Big Bazaar and Domino's Pizza, and claims to have over 10,000 retail stores, and restaurants that accept MobiKwik payments.

On the customer acquisition front Mobikwik currently claims to have 30 million, and expects to double this to about 70 million users by 2017.
Singh indicated that the company is not keen on becoming a payments bank, as of yet, and is more interested in building "strong offerings to support the ecosystem, through digitalisation."

The company raised USD 25 million via Series B funding from Tree Line Asia, Cisco Investment, American Express and Sequoia Capital among its investors, last April and is currently well funded, he said.