Keep pulling the thread on Harshil Mathur.
Razorpay is the largest payments platform in India.
Razorpay pivoted its strategy from serving educational institutions to serving startups after finding early traction with other startups in its co-working space.
Harshil Mathur believes the significant regulatory hurdles in India's payments sector create a strong competitive moat for Razorpay.
Approximately two weeks after its Y Combinator Demo Day, Razorpay's partner bank terminated their agreement, shutting down the company's platform for all 50 of its live merchants.
Razorpay has made a strategic decision to use AI in all parts of its business except for replacing human customer support agents, which it views as a critical channel for building trust.
Razorpay received acquisition offers from major global payment companies while still in the Y Combinator program and before launching its product.
Razorpay currently processes $180 billion in total payment volume, which is three times the size of the entire Indian market in 2015.
Harshil Mathur predicts that India's digital payments market will grow to be worth over one trillion dollars.
Between 2017 and 2020, Razorpay grew its business by approximately 40x.
After its Series A funding round of $10-11 million, Razorpay became profitable because the interest earned on its bank deposits exceeded its monthly burn rate of less than $200,000.
Razorpay was the first payment gateway in India to integrate with UPI, going live in September/October 2016 before the country's two largest banks had joined the network.
Following India's demonetization, major companies like Zomato, Swiggy, and BookMyShow rapidly onboarded with Razorpay because it was the only payment gateway offering UPI integration at the time.