India has rapidly emerged as one of the
world’s fastest-growing FinTech markets, ranking third globally in the number
of FinTech companies and accounting for 14 percent of domestic startup funding.
Fueled by technology-driven innovation, this vibrant ecosystem has transformed
traditional financial services, streamlining delivery, cutting costs, and
elevating the customer experience.
The “Crafting
Bharat – Season 2”, powered by AWS Startups, an initiative by
NewsReach, in association with VCCircle, and production partner – HT Smartcast,
explores how startups are harnessing the power of the cloud to accelerate
growth, optimise operations, and build solutions that will define
the India of Tomorrow. This series is hosted by Gautam Srinivasan,
famed for hosting a diverse range of TV and digital programs, currently
consulting editor at CNBC (India), CNN-News18, Forbes India, and The Economic
Times.
In this episode, we spotlight Amit Kumar,
Director and CTO of Easebuzz, who is revolutionising the financial
operating systems for businesses through their full-stack payment solutions
platform. He shares insights about becoming a full stack technology platform
for payments & financial operations and how AWS is helping them scale from
thousands to millions of transactions per day.
In this captivating series, explore inspiring
startup stories that are shifting gears and sparking innovation across sectors,
all contributing to India’s transformation into a developed nation by 2047.
Watch Episode: https://youtu.be/O1do_qfa2MI
Edited Excerpts:
Segment 1: Ignite
At the onset, what made your approach to
resolving complex payment issues unique versus your competitors?
From day one, we recognised that India’s 90
million+ online businesses face deeply varied challenges—price sensitivity,
uneven digitisation, credit constraints, and broken collection workflows unique
to each sector. Unlike competitors offering one-size-fits-all payment
processing, we segment businesses by industry (education, insurance,
e-commerce, etc.) and tailor end-to-end collection journeys, including payment
configuration, collection, split payments, reconciliation and multi-account
settlements. This vertical-first strategy lets us solve domain-specific
complexities and deliver outcomes our horizontal competitors can’t match.
What inspired you to go beyond just the
education domain to sectors like real estate, and how did you replicate that
model in real estate?
We began in the education sector at a pivotal
moment of digitisation, first building a placement portal to establish revenue.
As we gained insights, we pivoted to solve campus-specific payment
challenges—today, most institutes depend exclusively on our API-first,
domain-driven payment suite, which plugs seamlessly into any ERP with minimal
configuration. Leveraging that success, we expanded into real estate, where our
platform automates RERA-compliant payment collections and powers a SaaS booking
engine that lets buyers reserve flats with built-in validations and
workflows—all in one scalable ecosystem.
Segment 2: Launch
Easebuzz benefited from the Reserve Bank of
India embargo on most of the large payment aggregators, causing new brands to
look at fresh payment solutions. Take us through how you quickly managed to
scale to take advantage of this opportunity.
That period not only helped us win early
customers but, more importantly, solidified our credibility. Banking ecosystem
recognised our rigorous processes and trusted our compliance-driven portfolio,
which drove confidence in our solutions. As a result, over 20 banks now
directly partner with us, referring both their current account clients and NBFC
partners to Easebuzz’s full-stack payments platform.
Sub-segment: Boost
How has AWS enabled you to monetise data at a
lower cost and drive product development with new insights?
We scaled from thousands to over a million
transactions per day on AWS, leveraging their POC credits and rapid‐experiment
to optimise cost and performance. Engineers’ lives have become easier as they
can access data at the click of a button and drive platform efficiency. Drawing
on my data‐science background, I built a data-driven culture: our payment
gateway and layered SaaS products generate high-accuracy financial data,
empower every vertical with actionable insights, accelerate decision-making,
and unlock new customer value.
You also built an AI-powered Chatbot ERA on
Amazon Bedrock, which automates responses for merchant/customer queries and
developers. Could you expand on how these have improved your value proposition
with customers?
Leveraging AWS’s intuitive GenAI stack, we’ve
rolled out three core applications: streamlining internal operations, enhancing
customer interactions, and powering advanced fraud and risk detection. For
instance, our ERA model automatically handles L1/L2 support queries across 200+
WhatsApp groups, resolving thousands of issues in-platform and delivering a 40%
boost in efficiency alongside a 20% reduction in turnaround time.
Segment 3: Orbit
India's digital payments revolution is gaining
international momentum, with both UPI and RuPay expanding rapidly across
borders. What new opportunities are opening for Easebuzz as a result?
We see embedded finance as our next
frontier—supporting businesses as they scale globally, facilitate cross-border
trade, and integrate services via both our core platform and the B2B Bharat
Connect Platform. To accelerate this, we’re engaging a strategic investor to
guide our geographic expansion and align with regulatory and NPCI initiatives.
Additionally, we’re preparing for the upcoming interoperable Internet Banking
and Mobile Banking initiative, which promises to revolutionise net-banking
infrastructure for all banks.
The Fintech SaaS market is central to the
financial sector’s digital evolution. By forging hybrid partnerships that blend
banks’ institutional resilience with the agility and innovation of fintech
solutions, the industry is seamlessly bridging legacy systems and emerging
trends. This collaboration not only reshapes the future of financial services
but also accelerates India’s journey toward developed-nation status.
Stay tuned to Crafting Bharat – Season 2 as we
bring you these inspiring entrepreneurs for insightful and candid discussions
with Gautam Srinivasan.
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