Selling Shovels in the Fintech Goldrush | Nageen Kommu (Digitap)

"In a gold rush, the best business you can do is selling shovels to the gold diggers". 

In this episode, Nageen Kommu explains how his company, Digitap, provides the essential tools for India's fintech lenders, helping them analyze data to make smarter decisions in a booming market.

Nageen Kommu is the Founder and CEO of Digitap.ai, a bootstrapped and profitable B2B fintech company. In just five years since its founding in 2019, he has scaled the company to a revenue of

₹8.4 Crores (approximately $3.43M) and serves over

200 clients, including industry giants like KreditBee, Navi, and BharatPe. A graduate of NITK and IIM Ahmedabad, his journey is a masterclass in resilience and strategic pivoting.

In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, Nageen unpacks his journey and the secrets behind building a profitable fintech startup.

Key Insights from the Conversation:

• Solving for the Underserved: Digitap was built to solve a massive inefficiency in India's credit market, targeting the 400 million people who are "new-to-credit" or have thin files, making them invisible to traditional lenders.
• Alternate Data as the Engine: The company's core technology analyzes seven different types of alternate data—including bank statements, device data, and e-commerce activity—to build a comprehensive risk profile for borrowers.
• The Bootstrapped Anomaly: In a sector dominated by VC funding, Digitap made the deliberate choice to bootstrap. This instilled a culture of financial discipline and a customer-friendly,
  pay-as-you-go business model with no heavy upfront fees.
• Pivoting from Failure: Nageen's first venture, a sports-tech platform called Dribl, failed to gain traction and shut down after two and a half years. He leveraged this experience to identify a more lucrative market and launch Digitap with a clear, validated hypothesis.
• Human-Centric AI: Nageen advocates for a balanced approach where AI is a powerful tool to augment and amplify human capabilities, not replace them entirely, especially in handling nuanced financial decisions and building trust.

YouTube Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction: Selling Shovels in a Fintech Gold Rush

(02:40) The First Venture: The Ambitious Idea and Painful Failure of Dribl (Sports-Tech)

(11:49) The Pivot: How Failure Led to Finding a Real Problem in Fintech

(14:55) Building the First Product: Creating Simple Onboarding & eSign Solutions to Survive

(24:00) The Core Engine: Building the Alternate Data Suite to Assess Credit Risk

(25:50) The 7 Data Sources: How Digitap Analyzes SMS, E-commerce, and Location Data

(30:55) The Psychology of Data: Why a Customer Who Needs Credit is Willing to Share Information

(33:40) The Business Model: How Digitap's Bootstrapped, Pay-As-You-Go Model Works

(38:25) Growth & Traction: Scaling to 70+ Clients and Reaching Profitability

(41:00) The Future Vision: Expanding Beyond Underwriting into Advertising and Global Markets

Hashtags:

#FounderThesis #StartupIndia #Fintech #Bootstrapping #NageenKommu #Digitap #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital #RiskManagement #AI #MachineLearning #CreditScore #FinancialInclusion #IndianStartups #AkshayDatt