The ‘delusional’ optimist

Mathur takes Ajinkya Kawale and Shivani Shinde through the payment aggregator’s journey, its challenges, his vision for it, and where his optimism comes from

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“There are many things to pick from, but one can only choose a few,” says Razorpay cofounder Harshil Mathur, flipping through the menu at the chic pan-Asian restaurant, By the Mekong, in Mumbai. It is evident that he’s not referring to the food choices before him.

Gazing out from the 37th floor of the St Regis Mumbai, he takes in a neighbourhood he once navigated as a 20-something fintech founder over a decade ago, setting up meetings with bankers for potential partnerships.

This was when, amid the clutter of problem statements to choose from across hot sectors — ecommerce, ride hailing, crowdfunding — Jaipur-born Mathur and his cofounder, Shashank Kumar, zeroed in on the one force that could virtually power every enterprise: Digital payments.

This was long before ‘fintech’ became mainstream, and even before the Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, India’s now-ubiquitous real-time payments system, existed. The country was just stepping into its digitisation drive.

Before we get talking, and once he’s done scanning the menu, we move to the second order of business: Picking an Indo-Chinese speciality. We decide to go vegetarian.

For appetisers, Mathur’s favourite is a hot-and-sour soup; we order a lemon corn vegetarian variant. We also ask for a batch of steaming hot edamame truffle dumplings, and a radish cake on the side.

The main course will later arrive as a hearty bowl of udon noodles in a fiery dragon chilli sauce. This will be accompanied by a stir-fried portion of Asian green veggies glossed with a hot garlic dressing.

Mathur prefers to cool the anticipated wave of spice with a chilled glass of Mumbai masala soda.

Not listed on the menu, however, is the one thing he voraciously consumes: A hearty dose of “delusional optimism’, the startup head’s favourite staple, and a phrase he repeats more than once over the afternoon.