With $12 M investment, Bijlipay plans to disrupt the payment business among small merchants
In the payments business, speed and agility is everything. Merchants want to be set-up fast and customers want to complete their transaction super fast. To help us enable payments in a flash, here comes Bijlipay. It’s a payment services company operating across the spectrum – mPOS, e-commerce to issuing services.
The Chennai-based company is creating new and innovative payment solutions for emerging markets. Founded by Pavan Kachibhatla, Bijlipay partnered with Wirecard AG, one of the world’s leading independent provider of electronic payment systems, and Spire Payments, UK (which created the world’s first fully EMV compliant mPOS device), for its Mobile Point-of-Sale program. Pavan has over 20 years experience across various verticals spanning hospitality, sports, lifestyle, retail and e-commerce.
Prior to creating Bijlipay, Pavan successfully ran a consulting business which provided the India strategy for a number of international companies, including two companies related to the first IPL edition. In his earlier avatar as Director of Sales, South Asia, at IMG (the world’s leading sports and entertainment company), he was involved directly in various event properties, including Lakme India Fashion Week, Sahara Cup, and the Chennai Open ATP Tennis event, etc.
“First of all, we are not an mPOS only company. mPOS is one of the arrows in our quiver of payment solutions. Demonstrably, we have created some innovations in our approach to the SME segment. Our contracts with small merchants are in the vernacular languages, training videos are also in various Indian languages, while we also create bespoke accessories for the Indian market,” says Pavan.
USPs, traction and so far investment
The company is focused on tailoring the product for the Indian market, rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach. “What makes us different is that we use an extremely robust technology platform from a global leader in payments,” adds Pavan. The platform manages the relationship from end-to-end, and its agility in deployment, from sign-up to delivery is another differentiator.
Merchant adoption has been terrific and the number of use cases Bijlipay encounters each day makes it extremely exciting for the team. The company helped Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to use its mPOS devices to collect funds for the Jammu & Kashmir flood relief work. “The primary challenge today is transparency when it comes to ad-hoc fundraising. Contributors want to be sure that their funds are reaching the desired places. Collections in small boxes are easy to do, but very often small contributions and contributors do not get a receipt,” points out Pavan.
The BJP in Tamil Nadu wanted to change all this by using technology to bring in transparency, and of course, increased contributions.
Bijlipay is a privately funded venture by strategic investors based out of Singapore who have significant experience in the payments business. The company raised over $12 million in capital of which $2 million has been deployed for the India project.
Slow adoption of smartphone among small merchants is a big challenge
“In our experience, every merchant knows that accepting card payments will increase his business. Therefore, the sales process is quite simple and a two minute demo clinches it. The only challenge is the actual speed of adoption from feature phone to smartphone when it comes to the small merchant,” adds Pavan.
Road ahead
“The market is pretty large and we will be one of the leading full service payment services companies in India shortly. We are already working with new bank partners and the future is green and we are ready to go get it,” concludes Pavan.