How IppoPay is disrupting the Digital Payments space with its technology for the merchants in Tamil Nadu
- Kindly brief us about IppoPay. What led you to start your business in this segment?
IppoPay is a fintech start-up from Tamil Nadu providing top-notch Digital Banking Services. Launched in November 2020, they have had an incredible journey in the world of neo banking services for offline/online merchants in Tamil Nadu, majorly those without bank accounts. Headquartered in Chennai. they have grown 10X across multiple metrics and are termed profitable.
Mr. Mohan K, our founder, was working as a web designer in his early career. His personal journey inspired him to be an entrepreneur and this led him in founding “RoamSoft ” a software development company. The instincts of a serial entrepreneur and an absolute opportunist Mr. Mohan stepped into the welcoming world of FinTech having Co-founded “Foloosi Technologies”, based in the UAE. Foloosi grew to see quick investors and the firm is now ranked in the top 20 fintech startups in the Middle East by Forbes. Soon by November 2020 he decided to start IppoPay a fintech brand from Chennai, as the CEO.
- How did you develop the technology?
Their co-founder and CTO Mr.Jai Kumar started out as a one man army for building the technology for IppoPay. Our first leg of technology products were Payment Gateway for online merchants and Ippo Store App for offline merchants. The second leg envisioned products like Full Stack API for neobanking, Payouts, Digital insurance, digital loans, buy now pay later and the like.
- How is AI/ML shaping the digital payments industry today?
Automation is key to every software service. Fintech is highly dependent on AI and ML for speed and risk management. They are indispensable for the digital payments industry today and there are many companies that are dedicated AI/ML tech providers for businesses. Defence mechanisms for online-fraud also implement technologies based on AI and ML.
- Recently, you completed onboarding 1,00,000 merchants to your platform, how has the journey been so far?
Ippopay started a rigorous sales initiative in the month of November 2021. Before September of 2021, they had an on and off journey at field sales, but we put things on halt because we wanted to get on the floor with a robust sales structure and a dedicated Sales team with experienced leaders.
During the two months that we laid off our sales drive, we looked to seek resources and if possible start recruiting experienced sales minds. This is when we met Mr. Michael Johnson, Paytm’s Ex-Sales Head, Kerala and Tamil Nadu who was a victim of Paytm’s Covid-19 layoffs. Michael came on board as the Head of IppoPay’s Sales Wing in November 2021. His bouncing out of Paytm in the pandemic, is a streak of luck to IppoPay as under his leadership we have surpassed our own annual sales targets and ROI parameters. So the journey has been splendid. It has given us the confidence that our offerings and services are on the right track and we are looking forward to accelerate on the same road and excel in performance now.
- How technology is helping you scale your business rapidly?
Firstly our services, operations and support are main factors for scale up. If you mean technology for promotional scale up then it’s a digital world ! We are on all mainstream social media handles. We also give our appearances in state and national conferences. Besides, garnered sponsorship has helped win a significant percentage of our scale up.
- Explain to us the business model and the products that IppoPay offers.
The business model bends straight to target. We are on track to build the largest fintech brand with dead easy digital payments and banking solutions. Our focus is to cater to the millions of under/unBanked sectors in Bharath helping them in speeding up to digital banking.
Our payment infrastructure for online businesses include Payment Gateways and Payouts. We provide BaaS to Conventional Banks via full stack tech-API’s thereby digitizing various primary functions of banking like Collections, Lendings, Insurance and more. Our Core banking Infrastructure is an entire banking model for some of the tech- handicapped Regional Rural Banks, Small Finance Banks and Co-Operative Banks for the digitization of data collection and credit assessments.
Our Neo Banking solution for Offline Stores, the ‘Ippo Store’ is a fully featured Payment tool that facilitates Collection and Disbursal of payments. Some unique features of the store app are Banking Handle, Buy Now-Pay Later, Inbuilt e-POS, Digital Ledger, Inventory, Smart Customer Database and a Tongue Specific Portal.
Merchants are provided with Neo Bank Accounts and a Debit card. All payment transactions made by customers are settled to their Neobank accounts.
- What tech is used by IppoPay to ensure fraud-free digital transactions?
We have defence mechanisms in place for online frauds and they are all state-of-the-art technologies automated by probabilistic models implementing AI, ML and use of big data technology and negative intelligence. The defence technology is underpinned by the wealth of cross industry fraud and negative market intelligence combined with a powerful global consortium of information from external partners like banks, fintech’s and third parties as well as repositories of internal due diligence.
- With startups laying off at large , how do you envision hiring the right pool of talent in the start up business?
We were in fact known for high hiring percentages during the pandemic. Our company hires freshers from lower socio-economic backgrounds and gives them the opportunity to learn and develop skill sets. For top leadership posts we hire established fintech minds who can add wind to the wings of the company.
- How do you aim to grow the business and what are your growth plans?
As of today we stand at 1 lac merchants in Tamil Nadu. We have now started venturing into Karnataka using the freelancer model under 10 Executives and one Team Leader. They have acquired 300 outlets and we are waiting to see how operations and support are rendered to these merchants as a testing phase. We want to see how people are reacting to a QR from Tamil Nadu. We have strong competitors in Karnataka as they are digitally ahead of Tamil Nadu as per record. We are majorly focussing on street vendors and non-fixed outlets as they need the benefits of neo-banking that IppoPay provides. We educate them and explain to the rural merchants about the significance of Neo banking and assure them of the safety in it and most importantly give satisfying after-sales support. As far as I have seen our after-sales support has done 50% of onward marketing as our existing merchants would bring more merchants through word of mouth. That is why after-sales merchant satisfaction holds the highest priority in sustaining and improving our sales numbers..
Our plan and target is to create 50,00,000 leads by March 2023, it is not impossible but it is definitely a challenge. There are a few sales ideas and architecture laid out in place which will help us get closer to our numbers”.
