How We Built a Fintech Unicorn in Just Under 3 Years | Ashneer Grover (BharatPe)

"In India, people will never pay for service, but they will always pay for credit."

This was the powerful and disruptive thesis that Ashneer Grover used to build BharatPe. He understood that the real money in Indian fintech wasn't in charging for transactions but in using the data from those free transactions to create a massive lending business for the underserved merchant community.

Ashneer Grover is the former Co-founder and Managing Director of BharatPe , the disruptive fintech company he scaled into a $2.85 billion unicorn in under three years. Before his entrepreneurial journey, he raised $170 million as CFO for Grofers (now Blinkit) and executed deals worth $3 billion as an investment banker at Kotak. An alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad , he became a household name as a judge on the first season of Shark Tank India.

Key Insights from the Conversation:

• The "Free" Business Model: BharatPe's revolutionary model of offering free UPI QR payments was a "trojan horse" strategy to rapidly acquire merchants and their transaction data, which became the foundation for the real business: lending.
• "Feet-on-Street" Scaling: The company rejected expensive digital marketing, instead building a massive on-ground sales force to personally visit and onboard merchants. This high-touch model was crucial for building trust and was one of the cheapest acquisition models in the world at ~₹200 per merchant.
• Founder Conviction: When VCs were skeptical, Ashneer raised the first angel round of ₹1.9 crores from friends and family, pegging the amount to the value of his own house as a personal guarantee to his backers.
• Branding for B2B Trust: He believes B2B brands, especially in financial services, need strong, mainstream branding to build trust. This led to high-profile campaigns with Salman Khan and a team of 11 cricketers to appeal to shopkeepers across India.
• Solve a Big Problem: Ashneer advises founders to pick a big enough problem to solve. He argues that the effort required is the same whether the problem is big or small, but the scale of success is determined by the size of the problem.

Chapters:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:01:31 - Life at IIT Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad & The Lure of an MBA

00:06:21 - 7 Years in Investment Banking at Kotak

00:07:54 - Investing in Startups at American Express (MobiKwik, Paytm)

00:13:46 - First Startup Role: Scaling Grofers as CFO

00:19:46 - Understanding the Merchant at PC Jeweller

00:22:48 - The Genesis of BharatPe: Meeting the Co-founders

00:25:18 - The First Fundraise: Betting My House on the Idea

00:29:50 - The Zero MDR Disruption & Monetizing Through Lending

00:48:31 - Scaling to 60 Lakh Merchants: The 'Feet-on-Street' Model

00:51:45 - The Science of B2B Branding: Why We Signed Salman Khan

01:09:28 - Unfiltered Advice for Aspiring Founders

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