We Need More Mentorship Here

Crossing $1M in ARR in less than 18 months, and finding a robust product-market fit in the fin-tech ecosystem, Aravind Sriraman, Abhishek Rajagopal and Tholkappiyan Velavan are your classic entrepreneurial team—engineering graduates who put in their stints with large corporations, led teams, experimented successfully, and then decided to team up and start their own.

Not in New York or San Francisco. They are based in sleepy, conservative Chennai. In Tamil Nadu.

It wasn’t easy, though. “We began with the idea of analyzing customer financial transactions data to help financial services companies like banks and credit cards know their customers better and create compelling personalized offers. Except we came up against a wall almost instantly—the banks did not have the technology to share the data (with the consent of the customer who wishes to avail these offers) in a way that a fintech company could build over it.,” recalls the more loquacious Aravind Sriraman, who’s last job was at Amazon in the traffic and search verticals.

The lean team was quick to pivot. “We saw an opportunity to create some solutions for businesses to ease their tedious banking experiences, and built some light weight APIs to create a B2B payment stack—initiate fund transfers via IMPS, NEFT, RTGS and UPI…