Upasana Taku

The Chair, Executive Director, Co-Founder, and COO of the MobiKwik group is Upasana Rupkrishan Taku.

She is one of the most successful female business owners and not only co-founded Mobikwik but also Zaakpay. Zaakpay offers a service to address the payment-related problems in e-commerce. Additionally, Mobikwik streamlines mobile payments. The business was established in April 2009. The company's headquarters are in India's Gurgaon. More than 10 million people use the company's services currently across the nation. The company's founder and her husband, Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku, expanded the enterprise by introducing a number of amazing services, such as a small loan, and launching Mobikwik lite for locations with slow internet. In the field of mobile business, Mobikwik won the mBillionth Award South Asia in 2014.

Education

Taku completed her education and was a talented student. After completing high school, she was accepted to the National Institute of Technology in Jalandhar to pursue a B. Tech in industrial engineering before graduating from Stanford University with a Master's in Management Science and Engineering. She has more than 17 years of expertise in the finance, payment, and product industries. She graduated from the university with an engineering degree in industrial engineering.

Early Life

Taku belongs to a Kashmiri family but her professor parents worked in the western state of Gujarat. Born in Gandhinagar, she completed her training in Surat. Her chops and education led her to HSBC in San Diego. Taku was exceptional at her work there. She was successful in numerous fields like marketing and outreach, cast, and request exploration. When the United States was passing a change in business, lead by numerous big entrepreneurs, she joined PayPal. During her term at PayPal, she learned about payment systems in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. piecemeal from that, she also gained knowledge about threat discovery and fraud operation, stoner experience, and design.

During 2008, although she had her comfortable life with the commercial job, she realized that she no longer wanted to be a commercial drone. According to her, work was getting too easy indeed though she worked on some high impact systems and accumulated millions of bones . But, she wanted to come back to India and contribute to the Indian incipiency ecosystem.

“My interest was to address something fundamental at the grassroot level. Since it would be difficult to do that in the US, I decided to return to India in 2008,” she recollectes. Well, this was the turning point of Taku’s career!

By 2009, she was back in India. She made many new friends in the subcontinent and gained insight into the hottest industries and unmet needs in the startup and business environment. She claimed that a wallet like PayPal was not well-liked in India. Users could never envision a world without cash as a result. Well, the notion to close this gap and fight for the development of technology in the nation came from the example of India.

She also launched Zaakpay, a company that offers assistance with e-commerce payment problems. Later, she and her friend—who would later become her husband—would go on to co-found MobiKwik.

Marriage

She met Bipin Preet Singh by chance as she worked on her ideas and project. Via a common connection, she met Bipin and learned that he was keen to contribute to the improvement of the startup ecosystem as well. Within six months, Upasana was assisting him in numerous business-related areas. Later, she joined Mobikwik as one of its co-founders. The company's founder and her husband, Bipin, expanded it by introducing a few amazing options, such as a modest loan, and developing Mobikwik lite for places with slow internet.

Vision

Taku Co-Founded MobiKwik with a vision to transfigure the digital payments geography in India, which was close to nil when we started in 2009. She believes that the Indian Fintech occasion will be at least$ 1tn by 2025 and that MobiKwik will be a significant part of it.

Upasana is loves getting Deals systems done in record time while running a tight boat. Prior to her entrepreneurial trip, she worked as a Product director at PayPal, San Jose in the Financial Services, Global Payments and threat divisions. She also had a stint with HSBC, San Diego working in the Product platoon of their bus finance division.

She has always been passionate about creating an impact at the grassroot situations, which brought her back to India from the US in 2008. Her hard work and desire to serve the community have made her an inspirational figure who has been honored numerous times as one of India’s leading Tech authors.

About her company

Upasana Taku’s Mobikwik is veritably simple and need- grounded. Initially, they started the business as a platform for recharges, and after a while, it quickly became the national face of mobile holdalls.

Additionally, Mobikwik streamlines mobile payments. The business was founded in April 2009. The company's headquarters are in India's Gurgaon. The company currently employs more than 10 million drug addicts nationwide. Taku revolutionised the industry by bringing the idea of a physical portmanteau to the forefront at a time when people were still reliant on physical cash for small amounts like Rs 10. A millennial today cannot fathom going to a store for minor recharges; all they need to do is use an app to pay for all the recharges. Mobikwik has now experienced phenomenal corporate growth. The company hired its first employee in 2010 and it was extremely difficult for the squad to find someone with the same mindset to serve the community.

With six platoon members in 2011, the platoon's growth was incredibly slow. They relied on the home office market. Taku and Bipin Preet did, in fact, have to report to work on their wedding day! In 2011, they finally rented their first office, which included five apartments. They expanded rapidly over a short amount of time, becoming a platoon of 35 individuals by June 2012. The company submitted an application for an RBI PPI licence in September 2012, and they were granted it in July 2013.

The first round of the company's support was $5 million, which allowed them to move to a larger office in Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon with 50 employees. This was a corner for the platoon as it was a symbol of their growth. The second round of funding arrived in 2015, when Sequoia Capital, American Express, Tree Line Asia, and Cisco Investment were able to contribute $25 million.

Even nevertheless, slow payment gateways have been a key barrier to the expansion of the businesses, despite the boom of e-commerce in the nation. There weren't many payment options available during their period of expansion. Also, this member was ruled by a small number of corporations, therefore there were a lot of rivals. In 2014, Mobikwik entered an award called mBillionth Award South Asia in the order of mobile business.

The third round of funding for Taku's business arrived in 2016. This time, Net1, the GMO payment gateway, Mediatek, Sequoia Capital, and TreeLine Asia raised a minimum of $50 million. This was a tremendous accomplishment for the business because it allowed them to gain widespread recognition in the circuit.

Funding

The startup received a $250k first investment before raising $5 million in subsequent rounds from a US-based venture capital group.

2015 saw the company receive funding from Treeline Asia, an investment firm based in Singapore.

GMO, a Japanese internet company, invested in the business in May 2016.

References

https://www.mobikwik.com/ir/upasana-biohttps://startuptalky.com/upasana-taku-story/#:~:text=Taku%20finished%20her%20schooling%20in,Engineering%20from%20Stanford%20University%2C%20US.

https://leverageedu.com/blog/upasana-taku/

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