MobiKwik: What makes the firebrand co-founders defensive about company

The co-founders see their reliance on mostly Indian funding as a compelling USP

In the week gone by, Bipin Preet Singh, the co-founder of MobiKwik, went on a blocking spree on Twitter. The reason: people tagging him, asking him to own up to an alleged data breach at his firm which impacted the data of 3.5 million users.
 

This isn’t the first time Singh has done something like this — blocking people on Twitter for demanding accountability — but that does not take away from the effort and dedication with which he and his co-founder Upasana Taku have built the payments firm.
 

Taku, 41, and Singh, 40, are also married to each other, and have often spoken about how they were working through their wedding day too.
 

While Singh is more composed, measured and the “tech guy”, Taku is a firebrand, describing herself as a “self made woman in fintech India” on her social media profiles and in person.
 

A few years ago, at a meeting to discuss the company’s plans, Taku spoke to this reporter passionately about the work that has gone into building a fintech company in India from scratch.
 

Her diverse background — Taku is Kashmiri, grew up in Gujarat, studied in Punjab and then went on to do her Masters in Science from Stanford University — has helped her see and understand the Indian landscape.
 

Singh is an engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and worked at Intel, NVIDIA and Freescale Semiconductor before founding MobiKwik in 2009.
 

However, both Taku and Singh have always been a bit defensive about MobiKwik, especially with regard to the competition it faces from the biggest payment startup in India — Paytm.
 

A case in point was in 2016, when demonetisation was throwing up opportunities for e-wallets and Mobikwik, along with Paytm, was vying for a share of the market.
 

At the time Singh had taken a dig at Paytm, saying the firm was “dumping capital” to gain customers.
 

“We must be sensitive to companies, especially those that have massive foreign investments,” said Singh. “They can come into the country, dump capital and gain access to data.”
 

He was talking about the foreign investments — including a big chunk from Alibaba at the time — in Paytm. The nationalism, and "Made in India" narrative is one that MobiKwik has stuck with through all these years.
 

In its last annual report for financial year 2020, Taku said in a post, “Founded in 2009 by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku, we have raised over $100 million in funding from marquee investors such as Sequoia Capital, Bajaj Finance, American Express and Net1. With 60 per cent+ Indian ownership, MobiKwik is the Truly Indian Payments App. It is the only independent consumer payments player in India today which is neither owned nor remote controlled by a foreign company.”
 

As the landscape of digital payments has progressed extremely fast in the last five years, it has also meant newer players in the fray. MobiKwik has also entered other aspects of financial payments — consumer payments, credit, mutual funds and so on and payment gateway.
 

From competing with Paytm alone at one time, there are now newer and more flush with funds players to compete with- Google Pay, PhonePe, Groww, Zerodha and others are among the ones that operate in areas similar to MobiKwik.
 

According to people who have worked and interacted with the co-founders, a common strain is how being a company run by a husband-wife duo makes it different from other start-ups. A look at Glassdoor reviews of people who have worked at the company shows a largely positive view, but a common complaint that pops up is the "lack of clarity" in the senior management's vision for the company.
 

Both Singh and Taku have said their bit on the data hacking issue by way of statements and a blog post, refuting there was any breach of their users' data.
 

However, MobiKwik has remained focused on stability and growth. The company's net revenue rose 134 per cent to Rs 379 crore in FY20, and Taku said in the post mentioned earlier that the firm is confident of hitting profitability in FY21.
 

The denial of the recent alleged data breach at Mobikwik has also been attributed to the company targeting an IPO by September.
 

According to Bloomberg, the company is planning to file its draft IPO prospectus by May and intends to hold a pre-IPO round that will push the company’s valuation to $700 million.
 

According to Entrackr, Mobikwik has reached a post-money valuation of Rs 3,572 crore or $493 million following a recent funding round of $7.2 million.  Mobikwik had raised its last funding in December 2020 in which the company raised Rs 52 crore led by Hindustan Media Ventures.