At BrilliantRead Media, our aim is to bring to our community some of the unique and compelling stories from the start-up ecosystem. As part of this endeavour, we invited seasoned entrepreneur Mr Pathikrit Dasgupta for an exclusive interview with us. Pathikrit is a proven business leader, entrepreneur and business strategist. He is the Co-Founder, CEO and CBO of SabPaisa. Let’s learn more about his inspirational journey and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Pathikrit:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
I started my career as a salesperson at a Computer Training Center chain in 2000. That was my first exposure to information technology.
My love for Information Technology grew and I got exposure to several technology platforms with various companies.
In 2015, I started my second entrepreneurial journey with SabPaisa. It gives me immense pleasure to witness the growth of SabPaisa in 5 years.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
Life is short and we have to do so many things.
Entrepreneurship gives me the freedom to learn, apply, commit mistakes, gain and grow.”
‘SabPaisa’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving with the help of your startup?
SabPaisa is the world’s first hybrid online + e-offline payment platform and it is a rapidly growing company in the payment domain. We have India’s 1st Hybrid Payments Platform that not only simplifies payments collection but also subscription payments.
Today as we reach a Milestone of processing transactions worth more than INR 22 Billion, it brings an added satisfaction of enabling customers to automate their payments and reduce operational costs through our Future Ready Products.”
Our story is not only multiple successful product launches but also the validations from our customers. We take pride when customers say that our products never fall short of their expectations.
With SabPaisa, customers can enable payment collection in the shortest possible time and with the largest number of payment options
During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
We could foresee the increase in COVID cases and we switched to the remote working mode even before the lockdown happened. We tried to make every aspect of the business online and tech-enabled to ensure automation as much as possible.
We made sure that our team members are aligned in spite of the absence of physical meetings to overcome the challenges of the pandemic.
How do you manage yourself and keep on going despite the challenges? What drives you?
Whether you are an entrepreneur or doing a job, you have to be ready to face challenges.
For a highly regulated business segment like Fintech, the challenges are often quite unique and difficult.”
As a team, we put our minds together and face challenges. The driving force is to achieve the lofty goals that we have set for SabPaisa.
In your opinion what is more necessary: Idea or a good team for a successful startup?
Every startup has to start with an idea. While running the startup, several such ideas for new product/improvement of the existing product will come and go. Some of them will be tempting.
If you have a good team, you can select the right ideas and also execute them well. Like other Entrepreneurs, I will put more stress on having a good team.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
We celebrate every new milestone achieved. It can be a milestone regarding revenue, new bank partner signs up, new large customer signup, or new product version launch.
Apart from this, appreciations from our partners and customers also inspire us to do better. For a startup daily motivation dose is very important.
We would love to know your advice for all those starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
Be super confident about your offerings. You will never have the perfect product to start. Approach the largest customers from the start. The feedback which you will get will help you to improve your product. Don’t be boxed into a corner and play in the large and open market confidently.
Be flexible to change your business model, offerings, delivery mechanism, etc. as per the movements in the market.
Communicate with decision-makers directly and don’t waste your precious time in navigating through the intermediaries.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
