Early years
I come from a middle-class business family. When I was completing my undergraduate studies, I took one semester off in my second year to help manage my uncle's garment exports unit. I realised then that I enjoyed the entrepreneurial challenge of running a business.
Even though I joined Lucent Technologies after completing my engineering, the idea of starting my own business was always appealing.
I started ngpay in 2004 with a few friends from my apartment room in Bangalore. By 2006, we had built a high quality and secure platform and, through sheer stubbornness, persuaded six major businesses - Citi Financials, Airtel, Fame Cinemas, Air Deccan, HDFC Bank, and Sify - to sell products and services over our mobile platform.
I remember sitting in the offices of each of these companies all day, for days at a time, just to convince someone to hear the pitch.
My initial meetings in 2004-05 were spent explaining just how the mobile could be used for something other than making voice calls - a concept taken for granted by entrepreneurs today.
In mid-2006, with initial seed funding all but gone, I found myself in front of Ashish Gupta and Kanwal Singh of Helion Ventures. With just a demo and a series of detailed question and answer sessions I was able to convince them to invest $2.2 million in our company, making us Helion's first portfolio company.
In retrospect, I was very fortunate as they have been the most thoughtful mentors and advisors to us as we expanded the company.
Since then, ngpay has seen amazing growth. We made good investments on technology and evolution of consumer demand for mobile services.
As a result, with no additional funding and a lean team of 30 professionals, we have built ngpay into the leading end-to-end mobile commerce service in India.
I have always thought that this journey is something that was destined to happen.
Image: ngpay started its journey in a room in this building.
Also read: The world's 10 freest economies
| Live updates on money.rediff.com |
|
Advertisement
