Timed to perfection

THE IDEA WAS TO IDENTIFY AND PLUG SYSTEMIC GAPS IN INDIA'S PAYMENTS ECOSYSTEM

- AYANTI BERA

FOR AKASH SINHA, the story of building Cashfree Payments was more than just about innovation and execution — it was about being in the right place at the right time. Recalling the pivotal early days when he set out to build a full-stack payments company, Sinha says, "You can have the best product or service, but if timing is not in your favour, then it is difficult to be successful."

For Sinha and his co-founder, Reeju Datta, the stars aligned in 2015, when India's online payments industry was just starting to take off on the back of unprecedented market momentum. "During these years, the overall industry was growing thanks to UPI, demonetisation and a lot of other things," he says.

Born and raised in a small town in Jharkhand, Sinha credits IIIT Hyderabad for acquiring most of the skills he applied at Cashfree — "building front-end, back-end, and understanding how to take an idea from zero to one".

After graduation, Sinha cut his teeth in the fintech space at BankBazaar and later at Amazon.

His stint at Amazon helped him interpret metrics, understand user behaviour, and broadly decipher what drives growth at scale. "At Amazon, I learned to read the health of a company through numbers, which is a crucial skill for any entrepreneur," he explains.

In 2015, with about three years of industry experience, Sinha made the leap to entrepreneurship, but not blindly. "The biggest motivator was learning, not just success."