How Digital Payments Gateways Are Expanding in India?

 

We have seen a sharp rise in the digital payment sector of India post-COVID 19 times. The dynamic payment systems of India are continuously evolving and diversifying in the domestic ecosystem.  With the robust digital payment systems are evolving in India to be in pace with the fast-moving technology.

Here, we have kept our focus on payment gateways. In this context, we are reading about Paysharp - Chennai based B2B digital payment gateway startup.

Founder of PaySharp Based on the real problems we faced in my previous startup while collecting large ticket size payments either we have to spend for payment gateway or if collecting the payments directly on a bank account leads to bank reconciliation issues, manual process and many manual errors.

So, we want to build a fully automated and low cost (at least 20X cheaper) than payment gateways also want to receive the money in our bank account immediately.
Then we recognize the idea is bigger than life; it could be helpful to other businesses too so Paysharp was born.

The best part about Paysharp is that it stands between direct bank transfer and payment gateways; it has the good things of both worlds.

B2B Payments need to have a new look

B2B payments are still running in the old-fashioned way so want to focus on this unattractive category. Moreover, Krishna Kumar Mani says that Paysharp cannot be termed as a digital payment gateway because it is incomplete without all the payments like a credit card, debit card, wallet etc. He says “We are an early-stage nascent startup focusing on few payment methods. We could say Paysharp is a payment solution provider but our payment methods are limited to UPI/IMPS/NEFT/RTGS."

Two key differences between others and Paysharp that the company is cost effective and helps in settling immediate settlements.

Flat pricing, for example, if the transaction value is either 10,000 or 1 Lac, we charge a flat fee of INR 10 not based on a percentage of the transaction. We only charge clients for several transactions, clients could save minimum 4X or even more than 20X if they choose us. But our payment methods are only limited to a few payment modes.

How are we unique?

We do the same-day settlement. Also, for selected businesses, we do more frequent settlements.

Funding Is Important for Startup or Not

Funding: Once my mentor told me, "As a founder if you are not ready to invest in your startup who else will invest?"

All my startups are started with my own money, so I recommend don't chase investors, focus on product and customer, investors may join later.

AWS and Google are providing free credits to startups even for non-funded startups, Don't wait for funding, test your hypothesis now.

Sustainability

Unit economics is one of the key parameters in sustainability. Don't run your startup without a revenue model. Also Making revenue in every transaction is not sufficient, every transaction startup should make a profit, if startups are doing it, it will sustain if the whole world stands against it.

Let me take my example, before a decade when I started it was very hard, now plenty of incubators are there even incubation cells run by universities are there easy to access. You will get better ideas from mentors. Don't think your first startup will be selected by premium incubators like combinator, join with local or online startup communities and attend sessions it is the MBAs for startup

At Paysharp, we have feature requests, new products and positive results always make us motivated. Our priority is client’s success, not just happy clients. Providing features and developing products to solve their problem.

We not only provide the features requested by them, we explain all the features we develop, how it helps them save time and money

Team Is Strength

I was blessed with good co-founders; they were the best in the world when I started my first startup. I don't have a co-founder as techie acted as CEO and CTO, once attended accelerators understand the one-man show does not work so have to add the right team members to the startup.

I didn't choose the co-founder for skills, skills we can teach or they will learn even over the time skill will change. I choose the team members based on attitude, who believes not only in the startup idea but also believes in me “says Krishna Mani.

Digital India initiatives are the mother of many fintech like us if there is no UPI, total India's online transaction volume in half. Governments many digital initiatives take us and other fintech to the next level which is 100X better position than now.

Regarding Revenues

As we have already reached break even in the year 2020 itself, we are hoping for 3X revenue in the year 2021.

Challenges Faced Post COVID

We have launched the product April 2020 during the COVID lockdown. It was very hard contacting and convincing clients, we tried to convince clients it is new normal and failed. We tried really hard for our first deal.
I firmly believe that digital payments are the future of India and it will make a difference in the current economic situation of the country.