BharatPe: Digital Transformation Through Fintech
About BharatPe's Founder
IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2021 was published in the month of October 2021 and to everyone’s surprise 13 self-made Indians born in the 1990’s made the list. Among them, 23 year old New Delhi based, Shashvat Nakrani made the headlines as the youngest self-made individual of 2021.
Background
Born in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat, Shashvat Nakrani is one of the three co-founders of BharatPe along with Ashneer Grover and Sameer Suhail. This 23 year old IIT dropout and co-founder of the payment app BharatPe was in his 3rd year of college at IIT Delhi, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Textile Technology when he recognized the business opportunity for a payment gateway,one that was accessible to merchants and did not eat up their margins. To develop a payment gateway that fulfilled these requirements, he made use of the information sharing feature of the United Payment Interface(UPI). This is how ‘BharatPe’ came into existence.
Shashvat’s father runs an education institute in Bhavnagar, Gujarat. A self-made educator, he had to struggle a lot in the early years of his career. When Shashvat started his own startup, his family supported his decision. However, they had inhibitions as he dropped out of IIT to become an entrepreneur.
About BharatPe
BharatPe caters to small merchants and kirana store owners of India. It enables merchants to conduct transactions for any other payment app like Paytm, Phonepe, Google Pay, and over 150 other UPI apps with just one QR code. The company offers a range of fintech products including interoperable QR code for UPI payments , Bharat Swipe for card acceptance, and small business financing.
Conclusion
Since its launch in 2018, BharatPe has expanded its network to 100 cities across India, including tier 2 and 3 cities. Through initiatives such as 12% Club, which is a peer-to-peer product, BharatPe continues to cater to the unmet demands of the merchants in the country.
Shashvat’s amazing journey is a true testimony of the potentials and the aspirations of New India. From taking a drop from one of the most prestigious institutes of the nation, to sacrificing job security to fulfill the unmet needs of the merchants and providing them an easy gateway interface for payment. Shashvat’s story is a true motivation for all those young Indians who want to build something for the country and solve the problems faced by their fellowmen.
About the author: Dipanjan Rout [21F3002560]
Dipanjan Rout is a foundation term student in IIT Madras BSC in Programming and Data Science. Besides this, he is a first year student in BSC (H) Data Science in Amity University, Kolkata. He has interests in the field of programming, data science and Artificial intelligence, finance ,startup and entrepreneurship. Graphic designing and content writing are his hobbies.