1. My Early FINance Career + Fascination with TECHnology
1.1. UBS Investment Bank + Malabar Investments w/ Akshay Mansukhani
Upon graduating in 2007, I embarked on my career as an Analyst at UBS Investment Bank’s Global Infrastructure & Privatization team. Recognized for my efforts, I was nominated for the UBS Thank You Award for Operational Excellence. Following this, my Director from New York, Akshay Mansukhani, brought along with him to Malabar Investments, a newly setup value investing hedge fund focused on the midcap space in India. Malabar, initially a nascent fund, today manages over $1.2 billion in assets. While I was captivated by the principles of value investing, my preference for working in the private space given my investment banking background at UBS, led me to a newly setup mine to market emerald business in London called EmeraldWorld International.
1.2. EmeraldWorld + Grant Thornton International w/ Peter Langdon
At EmeraldWorld, I served as Chief of Staff to Rajiv Gupta, where we successfully raised $33.3 million to corner the rough emerald market in Colombia. This experience highlighted the significant impact of investing in early-stage businesses and sparked my interest in startups. During this time, I brainstormed startup ideas with my college friend, Mohit Lalvani, who was involved in the nascent mobile space in India. While exploring various ideas, I was offered a role at Grant Thornton International (GTI) in London by our part-time CFO, Peter Langdon. Joining the newly established Global Strategy & Development team, we aimed to double GTI’s global revenues from $4 billion to $8 billion by 2015. Despite the stability, my passion for startups and building new things remained strong!
1.3. Startup Weekends + SpringBoard IoT (Cambridge)
Having being bit by the startup bug, I attended multiple Startup Weekends, including one at the offices of The Telegraph in London, where I pitched an idea to Boris Johnson (who said on camera that it was a very good idea!). Eventually, I won Idea Transform at Cambridge’s Judge Business School that gave me an opportunity to join SpringBoard IoT, an incubator in Cambridge. We developed Tap2WiFi, a proximity marketing platform for the UK market. Inspired by the vibrant startup ecosystem, I left my corporate job to focus on technology startups!
2. From FINance to TECHnology
2.1. TagTech Media & IndoVentures (Bombay > Bangalore)
Returning to Bombay from the UK in 2013, I founded TagTech Media, a QR/NFC proximity marketing platform selected to Nasscom’s 10,000 Startups. However, in 2013, the Indian market wasn’t ready for our offering. Recognizing the need to be in Bangalore for tech opportunities, I joined InnAccel, a medical device incubator. Drawing inspiration from InnAccel, I founded IndoVentures, focused on open-source hardware products. Despite being awarded a Fellowship to MIT’s Global Startup Workshop in 2014, I realized my strengths were better suited to software products as opposed to hardware given my training in business & the utter lack of engineering skills!
2.2. Learning about Product & First Exit
In Bangalore, living with Ryan Valles, an EiR at Accel Partners, taught me a great deal about digital products. My first full-time role in tech was as VP of Product at Bollyverse LLC, a Chicago based startup building the “Netflix of Indian cinema” with a library of over 4,000 regional titles. Leading the product & marketing efforts, we quickly gained traction and exited via a reverse merger within a year, reinforcing my passion for creating tech products that users loved.
2.3. Two more B2C Startups
After Bollyverse, I joined an Accel Partners-backed stealth messaging startup as a Director. We conducted extensive customer discovery, ultimately developing MEET, an ephemeral messaging app. Despite initial promise, we couldn’t secure additional funding given we couldn't replace WhatsApp and had to wound it down. Next, I co-founded L'occul, a platform for exclusive Indian brands, managing day-to-day operations. Replicating the physical experience of high-value products online proved challenging, and after 18 months, we decided to wind down L’occul too. At this point, I'd had one exit, but two wind downs and I decided to take a small break before jumping into my next gig!
3. Break in my career
3.1. Sabbatical
After winding down two startups, I took a break in July 2017. I spent 12 weeks alternating between kitesurfing (in Rameshwaram) and practicing yoga in (at the Sivananda ashram in Madurai). A family vacation to the UK helped me recharge, and I returned to India ready for my next challenge.
3.2. Near Fatal Car Crash Car Crash + COVID
Near the end of my sabbatical, en route to pick up my parents from the airport; a severe car crash left me in a coma for three weeks and I required a 3D printed titanium plate in my skull! (I'm Robocop 🤖). My recovery took nearly two years. In December 2019, I began a Product Management internship at a fintech company, but the COVID-19 pandemic led to a hiring freeze. During the ensuing national lockdown, I focused on upskilling myself, consulting multiple early-stage businesses & running a couple of structured startup experiments!
3.3. Getting back to it
Finally in December 2021, I got an opportunity to interview for Truecaller (TRUE:B), a Swedish company founded in 2009 that helps identify incoming calls over mobile with over 400mn Monthly Active Users (& more than 314mn Daily Active Users). While awaiting my visa for Truecaller, I had the opportunity to spend time with my old college buddy Mohit Lalvani and that's when Passvoy (previously: Bnkvoy) was conceived as a cross-border payments app for the Indian diaspora & tourists to India on top of UPI (FX on UPI). But based on his recommendation, I decided to focus on Truecaller given I'd been out of work for so long and join him later once he'd made some regulatory headway with this new fintech business.
4.1. Truecaller for iOS
In early 2022, I was offered a product role on their newly setup iOS team (0>1 team focused on rebuilding the Truecaller iOS app completely from scratch). I was responsible for managing the workflow of the newly setup iOS team consisting of over a dozen brilliant engineers, tasked with rebuilding the iOS app from the ground up. Our work led to a version that was 10x better and saw us double Truecaller’s global iOS user base within a couple of weeks of launch as well as Apple recognizing it as one of the top free apps of 2023! This experience solidified my capabilities in leading tech innovation and motivated me to do something entrepreneurial again.
4.2. Passvoy
In Oct 2022, my good friend Mohit came down to Stockholm and we decided to take a cruise to Helsinki & Tallinn. Thats when he mentioned that the Innovation Sandbox approval from the IFSCA (International Financial Services Centres Authority), India’s new unified Fintech Regulator was imminent and I decided it was time to start building again and joined Passvoy full-time in Nov 2022. The Passvoy app was live with EUR & GBP pay-ins, and we had all the pieces stitched up to enable payouts in INR but were just awaiting final regulatory approval to do so. Unfortunately, on Jan 16, 2024, 6 months after receiving the Limited Use Authorization (LUA) from the IFSCA (our Principal regulator) and 18 months after our original application in 2022, we received a cryptic disposal letter from our Associate regulator - the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The very next day; Jan 17, 2024 - NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) International announced via a Press Release that they'd tied up with Google Wallet to enable FX on UPI - something we'd applied for to IFSCA 18 months prior!!
4.3. Verifany
With this bombshell, we were back to the drawing board having wasted almost 2 years caught up in India's fintech regulatory redtape. However, one of our key learnings from Passvoy was that in today's age of AI & deepfakes, identities can easily be manipulated and fake profiles are on the rise! But a fool proof way of authenticating an individual's identity is via their bank accounts as that data never lies! That's what led to the concept of Verifany as well as a personal experience with my father’s loan application process (where the age on his national ID was faked by the loan officer at a leading lender in India to help him avail a loan he'd otherwise be ineligible for; due to his age!). Verifany leverages bank account data for identity & financial verification, addressing the growing need for secure verification methods. We are excited to launch Verifany’s Alpha as a Free Income Verification tool in the UK in Augusts 2024, offering a safe, secure & seamless solution. Similar to my previous role at Truecaller in Stockholm where we were using an individual's & businesses' phone numbers to establish their identity, at Verifany we use their bank account data not just to verify their identity - but take it a step further and answer financial questions based on their actual bank data.