Success Story Of Upasana Taku – The Founder of Zaakpay and Co-founder of Mobikwik
No doubt, women have proved themselves by playing a crucial role in a big organization. There are not any sectors has left for women where they are not working equally as men. This is called the women empowerment. Today I’m sharing a women success story who is the founder of Zaakpay and Co-founder of Mobikwik co-founder. The mobile wallet has become a buzzword today. I’m sure you have heard or used the mobile wallet called Mobikwik. So, let know more about her how she got into this business.
Introduction
Upasana Taku is one of the most successful women entrepreneurs who is not just the founder of Zaakpay but also co-founder of Mobikwik. Zaakpay provides service to solve the payment issues for eCommerce. And Mobikwik makes payment easier through mobile phones. The company was found in April 2009. The company has headquarters in Gurgaon India.
Currently, the company has more than 10 million users across the country. The founder of this company and her husband Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku expanded the business by adding few incredible services like a small loan, launching Mobikwik lite for those areas where have slow speed internet. In 2014, Mobikwik received an award called mBillionth Award South Asia in the category of mobile business.
Earlier life and education
From early childhood, Upasana Taku has been a bright student. After finishing high school, she got admission in National Institute of Technology Jalandhar for B. Tech in industrial engineering. She ended her own education by completing a master’s degree in Management Science and Engineering from Sandford University, US. Her well-performed score in education helped her to get a job at HSBC in San Diego, at the company she put on many hats, ranging from marketing and outreach, to predict and market research. Later she joined PayPal that help her to understand payment system, risk direction & Fraud management, user experience.
These kinds of experience helped her a lot while staring at her own company. By 2008, she returned to India. She made the decision to start the company. She researched a lot and met a different kind of people in India. At the time, India had no idea about cashless payment. She got the idea. She met one of her friends Bipin Preet Singh who is IIT graduated and was looking for a new opportunity.
In the Dainik Bhaskar interview, her husband mentioned that I kept asking Upasana “what should I do”. One day without thinking Bipin Preet Singh reigned software company and decided to run a business with Upasana. Later they became husband and wife. In August 2009, Upasana and Bipin started a company called Mobilink.
About Mobikwik
Initially, the Mobikwik app had only a mobile Recharge feature, which means add the money on the Mobikwik wallet and recharge the mobile. Later, she added so many recharge features like water billing, electricity payment bill, dish tv, and tata sky bill, IMPs money transfer, including mutual funds, credit card bill payment and many more.
As per Wikipedia, in May 2016, the company stared the servicer small loans for users through Mobikwik. Seeing the internet issues in a small town, they launched a new app called Mobikwik Lite, the app work very well even in 2G speed. In 2015, Upasana did a partnership with Uber and lunched the Mobikwik payment gateway, so that you can pay the Uber cost through the Mobikwik app.
If we see her incentive idea, it is really making our life easier. On 8 November 2017, IDFC Bank shacked hand with Mobikwik digital Payment solution to launch a co-branded virtual Visa prepaid card for Mobikwik customers. In March 2017, Mobikwik became a big competitor of Paytm. Mobikwik also has an international pattern like GoDaddy and many others which help them comply with Indian payment regulation. According to the Mobikwik website, the company is backed by Tree Line Asia, American Express, and Marquee investors.
Funding
The company started with a 250K dollar investment and raised five million dollars in series that come from a US-based VC firm.
In 2015, The company got investment from Singaporean investment firm Treeline Asia.
In May 2016, the company received investment from a Japanese internet company GMO.
Overall what I am seeing that her journey was incredible with her husband Bipin Preet Singh.
