Long build

HOW NIYO TOOK SHAPE WITHOUT A FOUNDING THESIS, AND BUILT ITS BUSINESS BY STAYING CLOSE TO PAYMENTS, REGULATION & USER BEHAVIOUR

- AYANTI BERA

MOST STARTUPS BEGIN with a clear problem statement. Niyo did not.When co-founder and CTO Virender Bisht began building the company in 2014, foreign exchange was not the goal. What he carried instead was a long familiarity with payment rails, a sense of what routinely broke for users, and the patience to keep building until something worked.

Bisht grew up in Faridabad, in a family that had migrated from the Kumaon region. Engineering was the default choice for someone good at mathematics and physics in the late 1990s. He graduated in mechanical engineering from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra in 2000, even though computers interested him more than machines.

That inclination shaped his career early. He joined Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), trained in Thiruvananthapuram, and soon moved to work with GE Healthcare out of Mumbai. Over the next few years, he helped set up an offshore development centre in Budapest before relocating to Milwaukee to work from GE’s headquarters. The exposure was global, structured, and process-heavy

By 2006, the Indian internet economy was beginning to stir. Bisht returned home, left TCS, and joined Tribal Fusion, then building its India engineering team. The role went beyond writing code. He observed hiring decisions, ad operations, and the mechanics of running a young company with limited resources.