Razorpay started as two engineers who could not get a payment gateway for a side project. Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, who met at IIT Roorkee, founded it in December 2014 and went through Y Combinator in W15 with a team of 11 in one apartment. Incumbents at the time demanded past operational records, a physical office, security deposits and high setup fees, which made small merchants unservable, and a mentor put the segment choice bluntly: go after the rabbits and deers, not the elephants. They had fewer than 1,000 merchants at the Tiger Global Series A, at which point Flipkart and Ola became reachable, and they priced at roughly 20 basis points on top of MDR. The other unusual call was the north star: payment success rate, not merchant count, at a time when Indian gateways ran below 60 to 65 percent, plus onboarding that went from document upload to accepting payments in 30 to 40 minutes. Operating revenue went from 193 crore rupees in FY19 to 1,481 crore in FY22.
5 hand-picked resources, 5 India-specific, 5 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it This is the segment selection episode: the rabbits and elephants analogy, fewer than 1,000 merchants at Series A, and why 20 basis points on top of MDR was the right price.
On Prime Venture Partners Podcast by Harshil Mathur Podcast episode with full transcript
Open primevp.in →Why we picked it A slide by slide walk through the actual 2014 deck, which had no founder slide and won on problem clarity, useful if you are framing a market nobody else thinks is a market.
On SeedToScale by Accel by Harshil Mathur Podcast episode
Open seedtoscale.com →Why we picked it Where the counterintuitive north star is explained: payment success rate rather than merchant count, plus 30 to 40 minute onboarding and being first to ship UPI Autopay.
From Inc42 by Deepsekhar Choudhury About 12 min read
Open inc42.com →Why we picked it The numbers spine behind the story, including exact take rates, multi product attach at 65 percent of customers, and the risk that new customer share of revenue kept shrinking.
From Contrary Research Long report
Open research.contrary.com →Why we picked it The rupee denominated revenue ladder plus the saying no story: refusing to enter buy now pay later against investor pressure and a projected valuation lift.
From Forbes India by Rajiv Singh About 8 min read
Open forbesindia.com →How gtm teardowns reads from a different seat.
