Two IITians
started FinTech (financial technology) company in 2012, when the startup boom
was yet to happen. What started as a peer to peer (P2P) payment mode has now
evolved into a startup called 'Happay' - happy payments - that has digitised
corporate financial management in India and made it go paperless.
Anshul Rai and
Varun Rathi, both pass out from IIT Kharagpur had quit their jobs at Microsoft
and Tata Power, respectively to start Happay. After failing initially, Happay
is now certified by Visa and MastserCard, the digital payments and
reimbursement system is now used by 4500 corporates including Adani, Aditya
Birla group, Oxford University Press, Symphony among others.
The mode helps
in generating a plastic card or corporate card for each employee through which
monthly reimbursements will be digitally transferred, saving the employee from
manually filing papers or submitting bills. Being eco-friendly innovation, it
has been selected among the top 20 ideas to expand in the UK market under the
London mayor's India Emerging 20 (IE20) business programme. In the first stage
around 300 ideas were shortlisted and presented in front of a panel consisting
of UK government representatives, out of which Happay, was one to make it
through the top 20.
The IITians will
now receive support from Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, to expand their
business in the UK and will get to help in form of discounted tax rates,
financial aid, and business advice.
Elated to make
it in the top 20, Anshul says, "Few years back, Indian companies were seen
as service providers and the indigenously created products were not deem fit
for the global market and now, when an Indian company wants to expand globally
they are looked at as ones who have worked in one of the most complex and vast
markets."
Looking back at
his struggle, he said, "When we started out the perception was that people
who fail to get jobs opt for startups. It was really difficult to recruit good
talent. For first few years Varun and I were the only employees at
Happay." At present the company employees 280 people and clocks over 1 million
transactions per month.
One of the
biggest challenges as a FinTech in India, according to Rai is, "Indian
banks have not migrated to cloud technology, while all the corporates have
shifted to the same. There is a huge gap between requirement of the corporates
and what the banks provide." He says that his only requirement form London
Mayor's office would be "a progressive bank."
