Razorpay's ‘Full Stack' Ambition

The fintech unicorn has gone beyond payments into neo banking and facilitating loans and insurance. The dream is to become the only financial platform a business will ever need

- Harichandan Arakali

Deepak Abbot, co-founder of India gold, had a small story about fintech unicorn Razorpay, which he recently recounted on Twitter. India gold, a Gurugram-based startup that offers gold loans and coins via an app, ran out of balance at one of its bank accounts one Saturday night in early February, after Abbot missed the email alert about it. The startup had regular payouts using that balance, and to make matters worse, the bank’s systems were under maintenance that night for eight hours.

Abbot tried transferring money from his personal account, but his bank had a 24-hour restriction after adding a beneficiary. And a transfer via unified payments interface couldn’t be done as the account where the balance was fast diminishing was a virtual one. A few other options didn’t work either, he recalled.

“I pinged Harshil Mathur at 10.30 pm and asked for help,” Abbot wrote. He requested Mathur, co-founder and CEO of Razorpay, to add ₹5 lakh to Indiagold’s balance. He knew it was a long shot because it wasn’t the payments platform’s responsibility to do this, but he tried his luck anyway.

“I expected Harshil to pause and think, but he said ‘let us add 10 lakhs just to be on the safer side’.” And even as the two were chatting, one of Mathur’s colleagues sent Abbot a WhatsApp message that money had been added to the account.

“This is the startup collaboration and support system we need. This is how we grow the ecosystem together. I just can’t thank the whole Razorpay team enough for being so supportive and thoughtful,” Abbot wrote on Twitter the Monday after that weekend. “Customer for life,” he promised.