E101: Upasana Taku (Co-founder & COO, MobiKwik)

The Desi VC: Indian Venture Capital | Angel Investors | Startups | VC

Upasana Taku is the Co-founder, COO and Chairperson of MobiKwik, a financial services company that provides a fintech platform designed for online payments (incl. BNPL), life insurance, and loans. The company has raised $178M from marquee investors such as Sequoia, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Blacksoil, AmEx Ventures, Orios Venture Partners, Cisco Investments among many others. Upasana built the company from scratch and now has 32 million users and 100,000 merchants, doing close to 500,000-1,000,000 transactions every day.

Episode Notes:

1. What inspired Upasana to found Mobikwik (4:23)

2. How does one validate an idea or a business in its early stages? (10:30)

3. The evolution of the CEO's role (23:08)

4. The vision for MobiKwik (30:53)

5. Thoughts on monetizing UPI (41:55)

6. Differentiating consumer and fintech products, companies, and offerings (45:50)

7. What advice would Upasana give herself if she had to start over? (51:10)

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Social Links:

MobiKwik on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MobiKwik

Upasana Taku on Twitter: https://twitter.com/UpasanaTaku

Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedesi_vc

Akash Bhat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatvakash

Podcast on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thedesivc

Akash Bhat on Instagram: https://instagram.com/bhatvakash