A peek into the lives of a Gujarat based startup and its five founders who have sparkled the scenario of payments in a short span of time, fulfilling everything that they wanted to serve and achieve for.

With the advancement of the technology and the catalyst of demonetisation, the vitality factor of online payments had seeped into the trading activities, businesses and their customers. However, availing those services was quite a bit of challenge for them. The compliances and the requirements were stringent and it was painful for the small business and startups as well as non-registered entities to get a means to collect online payments.

This is what was experienced by the five friends who had completed their respective graduations and had started their small freelancing business. They had registered with the top payment gateways but were unsuccessful to get a merchant account or even a reply from them in that matter. 

Office of PayKun

“We thought this is unfair for the small businesses if they cannot avail the online payment system in this digital era when it is very much necessary to adapt with this change to keep up with the growing competition and if they want to expand globally,” says Nirav Solanki, the co-founder and director at PayKun.

What is PayKun and how is it different?

To bring this revolution in the payment gateway and help and support the SMEs, the five friends, Prashant Kambad, Deepak Dabhi, Nirav Solanki, Nikunj Yadav and Vijay Yadav came together with the business idea of building a payment gateway solution - PayKun. It was launched on 15 August 2018 and was officially registered on 31st May 2018. All five founders were from the non-FinTech background and took 6 months to do research on everything from scratch about the payment gateway, its requirements and development essentials before that. Later, it took almost 2 years to build PayKun.

Today, PayKun is making it easy and reliable for any size and type of businesses to collect online payments with multiple popular online payment options in a safe and secured way. May it be a registered or non-registered, online websites/apps as well as offline shops, small or large enterprises, etc, they can get the online payment gateway quickly with PayKun. With the application of the latest technology as well as the infrastructure, its user-friendly interface and lowest-rates services have been making it efficient and cost-effective for the businesses to trade. It can be integrated into the websites or apps of all the major platforms or even be used without a website with its payment links and master links.

PayKun stands out because of its success in just a short period, it is included among the top payment gateways of India and most importantly satisfying today’s modern merchants with its efficient services. It aimed to provide its services at the lowest rates in the market and has also accomplished that goal along with delivering the best of the best. It provides 120+ all major online payment options with the best user interface checkout including Debit/Credit cards, Master Card, Visa, AMEX, Diners Club, RuPay, Net Banking, Wallets, UPI/BHIM, QR Code, etc. 

The past of the founders

They were five friends turned business partners who got their respective graduations in the tier 3 city, Bhavnagar in Gujarat, Nirav Solanki a B.E in IT, Prashant Kambad a B.E. in IT, Nikunj Yadav is a BCA, Deepak Dabhi got his Diploma in Computer Science and Vijay Yadav is a B.E. Mechanical.

Founders of PayKun

Nirav Solanki tells, “All of us five were least interested in taking up job employment and had a dream to do something big and start some business of our own.”

That is what they did together. First, they started with a small freelancing business which gave birth to the plan of developing a payment gateway. Nikunj Yadav worked with the Server Management, Vijay Yadav managed the business development and banking & legal relations, Prashant Kambad has developed the Paykun Payment Gateway technology, Deepak Dabhi overlooks the Accounts, HR and Graphics and Nirav Solanki manage the sales, business development and customer service departments.

The competition 

Various payment gateways existed when the PayKun was launched like RazorPay, Instamojo, PayUMoney, etc but PayKun has come out strong in no time and is giving good competition. It is among the cheapest payment gateways and manages to charge no other extra fees. Also, it provides 120+ popular online payment options as well as provides the features of payment links and master links. Also, it supports all the major platforms for a website as well as app integration for PHP, Magento, Android, iOS, WordPress, Ruby, Python, .Net, Node JS, Java, WHMCS, Prestashop, Opencart, etc. Also, it provides the highest successful transaction rate in the market.

Challenges and Bliss as an Entrepreneur and a Founder

“The path was rough as an entrepreneur for sure but we were determined to be successful. There were so many things to be taken care of, everything at the same time; technical, banking, legal, human resource, security compliances, etc. The field that we chose was unknown to us all and it was like learning a new language with no base in hand,” says Nirav Solanki when asked about his major challenges.

Bhavnagar is a tier 3 city and choosing to develop this huge set-up there is a challenge in itself. There were employees hired but the team was too small for the development of this big startup.

“As directors or founders and businessmen, there were some sour experiences that resulted in financial losses too. There were fraudsters that registered and took away the customer’s money, and we had to pay them back incurring a huge loss”

On the contrary, they have processed the successful transactions worth more than 20 million till today. And the previous month itself was closed at 2 million.Also, they are onboarding on an average 50 merchant account each day. The risk taken was worth it and is providing good results now.

He adds, “Client satisfaction has been a huge reward to us. We are providing what we dreamt of and that is the ease of access to all the businesses. We are empowering the startups and small businesses and helping them grow.”

Work-Life Balance

Any startup would demand time as it is in the initial stage when it is getting developed in all the areas. At that time, day and night all are the same and that is what it was with PayKun Founders too. The technological and infrastructure development, as well as other areas, demanded a lot of time.

Later today, as the leaders, they have to give a lot of time but there is ease too. The same applies to their staff and them both. They consider work and personal life as equally important and have a very liberal atmosphere at PayKun.

Ease of Access and Integrity

PayKun is focusing to make their services better and to add the features as per the requirements and demand of the market and merchants. Its user-friendly interface and all available payment options help with removing the dropouts of the customer.

There is no requirement of the website or application with its payment links and the master links. And the customers can enter their required amount and make the payment with the master links.

From the signup registration and even after they start the transactions PayKun has simplified the process for the merchants at all the levels. Its active and responsive support team through chat, email and calls for all types of queries makes the merchants worry-free.

It requires only basic online documents for registration with no requirement of the physical documentation. Also, with the optimum services, they pledge to do right at all times and charge no extra fees or hidden charges except for a minimum per transaction fee.

The future

PayKun has a mission to provide entrepreneurs with a simple, hassle-free and affordable online payment solution. It wants to get all the genuine Indian businesses registered with PayKun and would like to provide every required feature. 

“Its vision is to empower the business enterprises of all sizes to accept digital payments for their business in the most secured and easiest way possible with a reliable platform.”