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Business News/ Companies / People/  Our platform wants to create a complete financial ecosystem
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Our platform wants to create a complete financial ecosystem

Anirban Mukherjee, PayU India head, speaks about the tailwinds from the BillDesk acquisition and the road ahead

Anirban Mukherjee, PayU India headPremium
Anirban Mukherjee, PayU India head

BENGALURU/MUMBAI : Prosus-owned PayU, which has made the most expensive acquisition in the Indian fintech landscape, is looking to co-create new solutions with BillDesk, as it continues to explore possible integration with the latter. The deal, which will make PayU-Billdesk the leader in India’s B2B (business-to-business) payments space with a 50% share of online payments, is now turning its focus on insurance and brokerage business to complete its financial services ecosystem. Anirban Mukherjee, PayU India head, spoke about the tailwinds from the BillDesk acquisition and the road ahead. Edited excerpts from an interview:

What are the strengths that you will be leveraging from the BillDesk acquisition?

Our plan is a mix of organic and inorganic strategies. We look for inorganic opportunities which helps us scale, provides market leadership and allows us to get into complementary businesses. And we achieve all of that with the BillDesk acquisition.

Once the deal closes—it is only signed for now—we will be working with the BillDesk founders to lay out the overall plan. We will have to figure out what we take from each other and cross-pollinate (our solutions) and work towards co-creation of products.

BillDesk has proprietary payment rails with many banks which could come in handy. They are further along on their subscription platform, which is really useful.

There is a lot of scope on financial services. We have Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) which could be one of the checkout options for BillDesk merchants. And there will be other synergies we can explore.

In our previous acquisitions, most of the valuable people have continued to stay with us. We want to keep most people with us—there is a lot to be solved over the next 3-5 years.

Do we also see merchant lending for PayU become a big play, after the BillDesk acquisition?

We are experimenting with the merchant lending opportunity, which will be a serious play for us and is a logical step. Small and medium businesses are still capital-constrained, and with their permission, we have information about their transaction flows, on top of which we build our algorithms for lending.

What have your discussions with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) been on the acquisition, considering it is actively regulating the payments space?

So, we have talked to RBI and we have informed them (of the acquisition). We will have further discussions with them, post the close of the transaction, as we bring these platforms together. I hope what the regulator sees in this is that it will strengthen competition and foster innovation in the industry. It is an industry of many strong players, we create one more really strong player by bringing two companies of complementary capabilities together. Also, we need to understand that cash is still a big challenge in the market.

Does BillDesk continue to operate separately and to retain its brand name after the acquisition?

We haven’t discussed all these aspects yet. But if you ask me, absolutely, it is a great platform for people.

Now, what are the key focus areas for PayU, as a business in India?

In India, PayU’s strategy is three-fold. We want to build a large business in payments; be innovators in digital credit and want to have a full financial services ecosystem. The first two are largely organic plays, till date. For us, financial services is just a partnership play for now, which is visible in our investments in Fisdom (mutual funds) and Indiagold (digital gold).

PayU is still exploring. But we want to create a complete financial ecosystem with brokerages, insurance and issuance stacks. We are a platform company; so that means that we will power bank infrastructure, while having an independent app, as well.

On the consumer front, we are still credit-led and it is too early to say whether our financial services bet will be brought on to the LazyPay app.

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Published: 02 Sep 2021, 12:50 AM IST
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