Flipkart's Phonepe Calculations

THE FINTECH REVOLUTION IN INDIA IS FINALLY HAPPENING, AND INTO THE MIX HAS ENTERED INDIA’S BIGGEST INTERNET ERA ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURE, FLIPKART, WITH ITS PHONEPE UNIT. KIRANA STORES AND CONSUMERS ACROSS THE LENGTH AND BREADTH OF THE COUNTRY CAN EXPECT CHANGE, SOON

- Harichandan Arakali

UPI transactions: October 2016—0.1 million, October 2017—76.96 million. What a story!” wrote Nandan Nilekani, former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), in a tweet on November 1. Nilekani was, of course, referring to the spectacular success of India’s Unified Payments Interface, popularly called UPI, which every major payments provider— from banks to new-age mobile wallet providers—has enabled.

Riding this post-demonetisation (remember November 8, 2016?) wave are the mushrooming payments solutions providers, the biggest of which is the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-run Paytm, which supports the UPI platform, and the Bhim (Bharat Interface for Money) app, owned by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Added to the mix is Flipkart’s latest attempt at the digital payments business: PhonePe, which it took over in April 2016 from its enterprising co-founders Sameer Nigam, 40, and Rahul Chari, 40, who continue to operate as CEO and CTO respectively.

They, in fact, are driving PhonePe’s latest gambit—a calculator-based point-of-sale (POS) device—to counter the challenges of this highly competitive, albeit fast-growing space, and also, to further the cause of digitising India. Nigam believes the device, launched on October 31, will “easily be India’s point-of-sale device of the future”. The duo started work on it about 18 months ago, and every single aspect of it has been developed in-house, designed and manufactured for India, they say.

The inspiration for it came in early 2016 when, while walking around markets in various cities and towns, the complexity of India’s market became apparent to Nigam and Chari. And, therefore, the need for simplification.