Ep1: Unicorn, Payments & Chai-Biscuit ft. Mabel Chacko (Co-Founder - Open Financials)

so the days I'm like man you guys are awesome and the days that I'm like man I want to kill you what is wrong with you you have done five startups if I'm not wrong it was always about solving some problems you saw something that impacted you the banking world that I grew up in was not there for every single person out there why people don't know how to manage the money and I was like shocked you know how can someone survive I'm not holy fool in this world who doesn't know how to do all of this it's a mess for all startup entrepreneurs if if at all you were not an entrepreneur what else

would have you been M we barely had uh you know could afford food we used to survive on tiger biscuit and chai how has that Evolution impacted you in terms of your motivation I've never thought about what is a perfect day I just take every day as it comes and I think it is perfect the 100th unicorn of the country how how was the Journey of open for you te so [Music] far hello everyone this is the innovators and disruptors podcast and I'm your host abai tandan for those who do not know me I've been a corporate

Innovation product Innovation and a business lead leader for a while now and I've also invested in about 35 startups in my personal capacity and Via 3 to1 Capital this podcast has been brought in front of you today keeping in mind two primary things the first is that we want to have conversations about impact but at the same time it's not just about metrics we want to make sure that the second most important thing that we want to focus on are human emotions and philosophy behind the impact and that is where we have the innovators and disruptors podcasts coming to you you

and our first guest today is it's the first episode it's a very special episode for me because we're starting this podcast and today we have a Serial entrepreneur a brilliant woman a amazing humble person and a friend with me today to have this conversation it's none other than Mabel chako who is the co-founder of open bank welcome Mabel hi a thanks for having me lovely to have you here Mel thank you so much and before we go deeper into the conversations with you Mabel I do want to give us small round of thanks to some of the people today uh who have backed

this podcast the first one being the hustle Groove company let me introduce you to the hustle Group Company it's a Lifestyle brand that's redefining Street Wear through the power of fashion self-belief and resilience because they believe that your clothes should not just be good or make you good look good they should remind you of the champion that you are so to hustle Group Company the second one being discover dollar which is an e driven tech company that helps Brands and retailers recover hidden dollars from over payments and leakages such as pricing errors

duplicate payments cost overcharges and they do that by analyzing both structured and unstructured data thanks discover dollar and the third one being docs now in today's fast-paced world efficiency and AI Readiness are crucial everyone talks about this docn now's intelligent platform empowers businesses of all sizes to rapidly collect manage govern and collaborate on the data front transforming your documents and making sure there's an impact on the business bottom line all in a secure and a single environment so thank you so much to the sponsors today Mabel it's brilliant to

have you here today there are a lot of things that I wanted to talk to you about but most importantly I have seen you over the last 9 years we've been interacting for for a while now right uh I've seen you in a very very casual setting but I've also seen you on large stages talking about the impact that you're creating right and because our conversations are going to be on impact I wanted to talk to you about your Journey first you have done five startups if I'm not wrong right what has been the motivation behind the startups one after the other

and specific some of these startups have succeeded fairly very fairly well including open now so could you do you want to just sh shed some light on some of these aspects it was always about solving some problems um be it personal challenges that I have seen over the years or problems I saw someone was facing down the journey or something that could would create an impact at a sustained level and that is what kept me you know going from one startup to other all five of my startups we into fintech um starting with financial inclusion doing uh mobile payments uh

contract lless payments and then pay building a payment Gateway and now doing Neo Banking and and open together so you know it's always being about problem solving and trying to find newer ways to do things more effortlessly and that's what kept me going from one startup to the other yeah it's it's kind of uh very difficult for me to comprehend that last year I had a journey of Entrepreneurship for an year I was an entrepreneur and I you know realized that you know while it was very Soul satisfying to build what you thought can really solve a lot of problems in the

world right but it was also very taxing there's a lot of personal sacrifice that goes into it and I'm sure that you know I mean I still can't imagine five startups I don't know over the course of how many years was it more than 18 19 years now wow 19 years so that it's not a small amount of time to be making a lot of those sacrifices and building companies from scratch right it's not about the 0 to1 Journey it's not over the 1 to 10 Journey but it's the 10 to 100 Journey as well and then you've accomplished that quite a few times now so what was the motivation that put you

on the track to doing something of your own you said that you know you wanted to solve for problems right could you elaborate a little bit more about what what was that clear motivation when did you realize that this was a motivation to solve for problems and why fin you know Financial Technologies fintech just happened to me it just U was something I was very passionate about I was always U curious at least growing up very curious about why people don't know how to manage the money or because somewhere I I'm born to bank a parents so you know I always

thought that everyone had a bank account and everyone had a ATM card or you know debit card much later as it got called called but then I was always wondering how my maid who used to come home and she didn't know how much money my mother was giving her a salary she would always make me count it and I used to be curious as to why she can't count it why she doesn't know how to you know do this and why she has got no control over the money that uh she has earned because she says that I've seen this money today but tomorrow once I give it to my husband I really don't know where the money goes

after that so that that was a question growing up um all all my life and um you know that kept uh hitting me time and again and then uh somewhere in um while doing um studying in Gujarat when the earthquake had happened and you know I got to go into rural Gujarat and see you know how rebuilding some of the schools was happening through NSS and um that's where I got to see that you know the banking world that I grew up in was not there for every single person out there and somewhere when I uh you know met a team that was working on financial inclusion I ganged

up with them and you know we tried decided to uh take the journey together and try to solve for financial inclusion so that's how that's how I became an entrepreneur it was not a planned move it was just that I hit upon something that I was very passionate about that I felt very core about and decided to you know build that Journey at that point of time and then uh one thing led to another from uh doing tou to pay I researched upon you know who who would build the technology it was um you know Google search that led me to Anish he was trying to do something related to

financial inclusion but he was doing it in Kerala okay so I connected with him on our cot and yeah don't judge me for that no Facebook was not there in those days and uh LinkedIn was costly so an orot conversation is what got the conversation started with Anish and there on I joined him as a co-founder in cash next so that was into mobile payments um I moved from Amad to Bangalore Anish moved from Kerala to Bangalore and we did the entire of cash next the journey and then eventually getting um you know selling the

technology to a Latin American company yep um that entire Journey happened in Bangalore um so there again uh we were always thinking of you know what do we do next you know what do we build next and the word NFC started coming out in Bank conversations and we were always curious as to you know how NFC is going to pan out because globally you have um you know Visa Mastercard heavily investing on this technology and City Bank had done a pilot in Forum mall so NFC suddenly become a bus word in 2008 2009 in Bangalore so you know there we were thinking that okay how do now if

NFC has to become the future of payments then let's go about building the entire infrastructure layer around the entire thing so that was the entire Journey with uh neity obviously a year and a half or two years into operations we had to fold up MH and it literally drained off every penny that uh we had ever made from the first startup yeah um and then this rigma rooll again started of you know trying to figure out what next and how to get to that point uh to us a couple of years but then um you know we learned we wanted to do something with uh you e-commerce was

booming and we wanted to uh build a you know payment Gateway something that can help uh uh that can help uh Merchants collect payments in a much faster Manner and those were also the days where smartphones were coming into the picture mobile apps coming into the picture so how to give a you know good um you know while there were payment gateways like cus pay and pay already we wanted to build the checkout that would make a mobile checkout very easy and simple and uh there was a company called stripe in the US that we wanted to replicate and build the same kind of interface um in

the Indian market so that's what got us on the Journey of building a payment gateway called switch right and yeah that got later acquired by citrus and which is where you know in my role at C phace where I interacted with you yes and that was back in 2015 2015 so 9 years almost 10 years this year almost 10 years yeah yeah 10 years this year so a decade of having been connected to you and and the being a friend no no it's been my pleasure and I've I've you know I I'll come to this point as well but I didn't want to mention this that you know I've seen you give back a lot to

the ecosystem specifically to me as well right because I've been on the receiving side uh interacting with you learning from you on a lot of occasions right and uh J before I forget I did want to call this out to the audience specifically the genzi ones right because I'm sure people our age probably would have heard of Orit they wouldn't have folks chat GPT perplexity or Google or and find out what we're talking about we're not going to go into those details but very interestingly uh Mel when you're speaking about this whole journey right uh one realization that occurred to me

was the fact that you know it's human travesty that leads to Innovation you saw something that impacted you in your while you're growing up you saw those earthquake uh related impact you saw that you know a lot of people did not really understand the basics of banking the basics of accounting or understanding how to deal with finances right and that's that's something that had an impact on you uh so that's fantastic right because a lot of times I've seen that travesty is what eventually leads to solving for that problem the hunger to solve those

problems that can created back and very interestingly you also mentioned about the fact that you know you almost went broke so did that happen once twice or many times many times yes wow okay so I've been broke multiple times coming to Bangalore I had some 5,000 rupees Anish had some th000 rupees uh he lost that in he was smoking outside uh Majestic uh bus stand okay and uh he landed up pay 500 Rupees is fine ouch to the cops were smoking in a public place yeah so literally down to 500 rupees so that's where we started our journey the entire journey of uh

cash next almost 10 months was straight struggle for us we barely had uh you know could afford food 20 rupees 30 rupees Max in a day 20 rupees most days and uh you know we used to survive on tiger biscuit and chai for you know two meals a day or whatever and uh whatever we could save we would from bus travels all the coins we call them magic coins so we would keep store that under the mattress so that you know whenever it amounts to 100 200 rupees we would go and have some you know decent sambar rice or a Tali meal or something that we could afford at any of the local

restaurants so yeah seen seen struggles at very close quarters um they on uh one neity folded up again we were back to Ground Zero just that you know we had some shelter mhm to ourselves but again we had to restart the entire uh Journey all together because um neity was a self-funded startup it was completely boat strapped and right at the end um you know we were left with really nothing and then Anish decided to write to CEOs and see if someone would offer a job to a College Dropout and uh Ashish Kash who was then the founder of

ibbo uh decided to take a bet on Anish and give him a break so that was something that helped us uh get back on track financially at that point wow you know I've read a book called as the hard thing about hard things right and uh the first half of the book mayel talks about the ups and downs of uh uh Ben horz as a as a Founder right and for me I was amazed and uh I remember having this conversation with you about 10 years ago like we we speaking about it right uh just in one of those conversations where I came to know about you know some of the ups and downs that you you just

spoke about and I was like shocked you know how can someone survive I mean that's this is a story of resilience and gret in my head right it's not possible unless you know you are so so bullish about the kind of impact that you want to create that the motivation is so strong that uh you know you can live through tiger biscuits and milk or chai uh you know that that's impossible otherwise you know it's you you you can't passion that drives you to you know survive another day you just have to be there for when time time goes good you just need to survive till that point

so it just takes a yeah it does take a little more than grit and determination it takes a another level of passion for me somewhere Anish was my motivation because he is even even worse he's the guy who has slept at Railway stations and bus stands and at least the time that I have been with him we always had a you know place we could rent and have some shelter over our head yeah it was a struggle to pay the rent that that is another story but uh we still had a roof over our head but seeing a Firebrand entrepreneur like Anish and because he seen those tough times he was always

that you know very positive Soul you it's a lot about entrepreneurship is also about your co-founder right if you find if you have a co-founder who is always miserable and you know when the downward spiral happens all of both of you will always get sucked into the same thing but then if even one person is positive in that entire thing that person pulls you through and for me Anish was that person who you know whenever I would reach a downward spiral he would be like hey it's okay we will survive this there will always be another day you know just uh you know he

keeps telling me that when the when you're stuck in darkness just keep looking around you will find a r of light somewhere and just keep focusing on that till you know you get to it and you reach the other side so having him as part of the journey was uh a huge change because having a co-founder definitely you know even today when uh friends ask me should I have a co-founder or should I not have a co-founder I would say that entrepreneurship is is very tough and when you have to go through the entire thing on your own unless you are a super

human you will never be able to pull yourself up every single day and stay motivated right so somewhere having a co-founder does help um you know to pull you through and help you to arrive with decisions it's always better to always have someone who would be a devil's advocate in the you know mix as well so so yeah it's a it's a fun ride um provided did you decided to look for the fun even even when you are uh you know soaked in the rain yeah I'm sure I mean yeah that's very mildly putting it across you you you know spoke about Anish as a co-founder you spoke about

some very interesting things about Anish and I've interacted with Anish quite a few times too now so I've seen how positive he is how encouraging and motivating he is you know it's spoken to me and encouraged me on a few occasions too uh but you know was the bad boy habit of Anish that really uh decide for you to get married to him because he lost 500 rupees out of th000 on a smoking file so I want you to also understand on more on the human level see I mean human not as a co-founder that you decide to get married to Anisha just a little perspective from your lens

I think doing two startups we saw a lot of U you know uh together um that was you know enough to you know say that okay um this is a person that I want to spend the rest of my life with the other the one thing that I saw in him was whenever I had a bad day he would pull me up um and always be there to be the you know uh shoulder to lean on so he was always there for me when things were not uh going good for us so that was one of my motivations but apart from that I used to tell him and say you know say that look at you who's going to get married to you who going to put up with

your Randomness no one is else is going to do it I am your choice and then he'll be like look at you who's going to marry you uh I think you know we should just put up with each other but somewhere our parents also agree to that um you know uh I a Christian an is a Hindu but somehow I parents never had that problem they were pretty supportive they were like yeah I know where my son is because of you and my mom was like uh she's mentally okay and sane because of this guy and uh my mom dad were also supportive equally his par all just supportive so somewhere they also wanted

that you know we settle down together after doing two startups success failure all of that apart they definitely knew that you know we could stick around with each other for a very long time that's amazing that's that's actually very sweet and very amazing right I I think if I had to go back to akanga my wife and ask her this question I think more often than not people would just say that you know we can bear each other I think we have known each other enough for a while to know for a fact that you know we we'll pull through the rest of the life together right we'll bear each

other out uh but I think you know you're a niche coming together and building impact side by side there's a lot of passion involved there's a lot of care involved as a co-founder plus as a as a friend as a buddy right who pulled each other up I think that that that's amazing to hear so that's the side that I wanted to understand a little bit more and thank you so much for shedding light on that mael uh very interestingly Mabel uh you know I also wanted to understand that you know we spoke about intrinsic motivations human motivations now we

spoke about that while growing up you saw uh certain incidents and that left a mark in your mind about creating impact on the financial side uh but over the years did you find other areas to you know contribute to I know for a fact that you know there have been people who have contributed in your journey you have category called out for example Head Start right I remember on multiple occasions you've said that to me and you've been very supportive of them now after you have become a successful entrepreneur right uh how have you contributed and who are the other people

that you think have contributed in your journey if you can shed some light on that as well very early days in Bangalore uh you know Head Start was also new but then our motivation to come to Bangalore was the ecosystem of that was there for startups um here and Head Start Proto Ty being the three that were leading the you know startup scene at that point of time Amit sing from uh Head Start was the first to identify us and he used to tell us about start startup Saturday Anish of course knew about it much longer because he knew it from Kal Bora and a bunch of others who

who had initially started out Head Start start and he used to tell me that you know listen bangr is a scene all of these guys are there you have enough of mentorship and everything we should just move to Bangalore and uh you know maybe we'll find more support uh doing a startup in Bangalore so that was a m motivation to come here apart from the fact that of course Tech resources are you know more commonly available here so that was the other motivation but even in our hunger days we used to save money to travel for startup Saturdays that is something that we would always try not

to miss you know if we know something is happening and we we are we have enough money to reach there by bus or you know whatever means possible we would always travel to attender Startup Saturday because that would give us some knowledge you know discussions that are happening or you know connects with people and that really helped us a lot um you know in being in networking and trying to understand different people's perspectives or and trying to tell our story uh you know literally becomes we started used to using it as a Podium to tell people what we were trying to build

what we trying to do with mobile payments and all of that same way Tai uh was also a very big uh supporter in our journey wherever there would be meetups or conferences that they are doing we would always try to attend as much as possible and network around as much as possible the amount of support I got from the ecosystem that was there um in my very early days of being an entrepreneur in Bangalore I really you know valued it a lot because that's not something that was available for me in Amad when I was doing a you know my journey with tach to I always used to

seek for the that but it was not available at that point in in Amad obviously now the scene is very very different Amad is a leading ecosystem uh in India yeah and I'm so glad it has become like that so that another mbel doesn't have to leave you know a HomeTown to come out and do entrepreneurship but at the same time the support that the ecosystem gives and uh which was my motivation that when I was running uh you know the upstart and code of series at Citrus Bay it was not done as a marketing initiative it was never done as you know uh branding

initiative you have come in as a speaker in one of those sessions right so it was never done as you know Citrus space branded initiative that was there it was always about getting the community together getting 10 entrepreneurs together um bringing in two three folks from the ecosystem to speak to them to connect with them and see you know how the conversation goes and what each one can learn from each other so it was always ecosystem is what where I learned and that is the ground that I always wanted to build for others to learn from makes a lot of sense uh j i I've

personally seen you you know contribute to that ecosystem there was a time I think in 2017 around 2016 17 18 I think uh those 3 4 years uh I think couple of those years where we had a bunch of these catch-ups Community catchup community catch up right and uh we had two rules I don't know if you remember those the first rule was the these are going to be agenda Less Conversation so you know no sales help each other out let's talk about stuff let's talk about problems but no sales you know let's not sell any of our own personal agendas and the rule

number two was follow rule number one right of course there was one miscreant dear friend back then at off uh no back then at than at zenov as well a would always break those rules right but uh but he was a fun guy I also got to learn a lot from the conversations with uh with with through bunch of bunch of you guys who used to drive that entire thing yeah yeah it it was fun it was generally over drinks in Bangalore and that's the culture that I grew up in when I was growing up in my journey uh of of being in love with the entrepreneurship

culture being in love with Innovation and I think uh in that Journey I've seen you contribute quite significantly on a lot of times I've you know picked up my phone reached out to you uh and you have always given me some very interesting Gan some interesting wisdom uh that has helped me in my journey as well in terms of taking certain decisions too thank you so much for that as well Mel and I know you've contributed to a lot of other people as well uh who still are picking up a lot of stuff from you right uh on a daily basis now you have a large company that brings me to to another

interesting point right in a large company and you spoke about Talent availability in Bangalore now I'm noticing something interesting uh at my end over the last 2 three years I've seen that I've started interacting with the genzies in the workforce a lot more right and uh I'm going to make a very controversial statement here but I'm going to still stick to my cander right about what I feel having worked with a bunch of genes I've realized that they are probably more more brilliant that I have been at that age or probably even now there's a

lot of learning that I have from them but there's also a way of life that they're leading that I just I'm not able to comprehend and I feel like a lot older now when I was growing up I used to talk about those old folks out there saying that you know Hey listen I know more than you you know you're just too slow or you're not understanding the way of you know the new way of working the new way of life and I think probably they think of me as that as well because I have not been able to really comprehend their mindset so the days I'm like man you guys are awesome and the

days that I'm like man I want to kill you right so at open and and the ecosystem around you as well you must be working with a lot of newer Talent younger people right genzies how do you deal with that how do you motivate them how do you keep them involved and engaged in in contributing to a larger purpose you can't do anything with genes if they are interested they are interested if they not they're not so uh more than that I think we training all our earlier Generations the Our Generations right on how to cope up with them because a lot of our conversations

with people managers and all is how to deal with genzi uh in your team the genzi Mania in your team and um and yeah it it is definitely you know very very different from the kind of folks we are definitely it's much smarter generation they know how to use all the tools um you know uh and get work done much faster they uh they need motivation they need to feel that you know they're doing something that is impactful right so that much more effort goes into telling them uh you know giving back feedback that Loop has to come into them you know earlier we used to do a say an annual

appraisal cycle or whatever and and then and most of our generation was okay with that that you know aaal discussion happens once in a year and and then you know whatever feedback and all of that is accounted for but most of this the the Gen Z needs more instant feedback they instant Ramen that way they need uh instant feedback so we've at least built a not the you know entire appraisal cycle but at least oks and things that happen a lot more faster so that they know what what's the goal that they supposed to work to and they know that whe How much of it has been achieved or

not what has been appreciated what is a good thing so we do it more frequently in the organ oranization now than probably we did it 3 years back or four years back when genes were not there so that's something that most companies will end up adopting and lot about manager training is going to be about how to deal with agencies because that's the next set coming into the workforce right now it's an evolution no if you look at our generation and our parents generation it was for them it was a Roa and you know those kind of needs right so they I've had parent my parents have

worked in banks for like 30 9 40 my dad worked in State Bank of India for 42 years wow my mom retired from idbi after 39 years of service so they've joined there and they've lived their entire life in that organization right and when they see our generation and you know we hopping jobs for for them even as stanging a job at after 5 years or 7 years also is a big anxiety they will be like are again how are you going to do for for my parents specifically after one startup and I start another start up they like again you're starting up again what is wrong with you again you just

settled in your job right now you're doing well in uh citus pay or pay you why why are you starting off all over again and uh you know they have that anxiety of you know why are you doing this all every new every 5 years doing something new or every seven years doing something new H it's the same thing now from our generation to the Next Generation something has to go different right they not bothered about Ro K Baka and all of that has been taken care of by the grandparents or the parents generation and uh that is not the you know need most of our generation

probably went off in paying emis for all the loans that we would have taken in our 20s and 30s right so we would be the rest of our working life is going to be all about paying off those emis and taking care of all of those debts and all the geny they not the ones who going to take emis at all I don't think you know housing loan or a loan or all of these things really exist for them they just about renting things today I want to live in a you know um in a villa I want to experience what the life is let me go and rent a villa tomorrow I want to you know next year I just decided I

want to see what it is to stay on the 26th floor so let me just go and uh you know rent a penthouse they like that kind of flexibility and that's not something that at least Our Generation would do the ones of you know who are in our late 30s or ear 40s we really wouldn't um agree to that we would be like you know I need to take a housing loan I need to get a house somewhere I'll keep paying emis I'll find jobs that will sustain those emis I'll keep getting salaries that will sustain those emis but geny is different they they don't want to get

tied to a certain you know place because their car is there or because their home is there they just want to have that flexibility to move move around today I'm working in bangal or tomorrow I'm working in you know next year I just decided I want to experience what Delhi is I'll go and find a job in Delhi so it's all about living life to the fullest without having any hold backs for that generation and work will eventually have to become a lot more flexible to keep them motivated makes sense in fact that draws me to another question Mabel uh you you mentioned

about Roti Kaa and Maan right so maso's uh pyramid of hierarchy right hierarchy of needs talks about the beaste element is everyone needs clothing they need food they need water they need shelter right that's a basic need of any human and then you start going towards making money to sustain a better life then you start going towards uh wealth creation you start start talking about self-esteem dignity freedom to operate and so on and so forth till eventually you come to a place of self-actualization now I have realized this

that the middle class buring in Europe has led to a shift in the mindset of people for example back in 7s 80s '90s Post Independent uh era of India it was all about building a country there was a unified Vision that you know how do we contribute towards building a nation right and that's why if you see our parents and their generation they all all try to become you know doctors Engineers Bankers because it was important at that point of time for those kind of professions to build uh infrastructure to develop the nation right I think eventually it came to a

place where digital technology took over or technology as a as a career option took over so '90s to 2000 2010 onward till till 2010 15 20 you saw a lot of focus on digital Technologies people choosing Information Technology computer science as a major uh in their in their education right or any different kind of Technologies around it to build a career for themselves because this is where we evolved as a nation or as humanity and now you see a lot of people are away from that stigma of being a standup comic or taking up jobs which are more gig economy driven which are more

freelance driven right not looking for that kind of a stability in fact they're looking for more flexibility and they're very very very composed about this in your journey as well and I'm referring to the fact that you know you've done five startups over the course I'm sure that you know there has been Evolution that you have seen in terms of your needs you spoke about a time where 20 30 rupees a day was what you were you know sustaining on to a place where you have built a large organization you know it's it's the 100th unicorn of the country how has

that Evolution impacted you in terms of your motivation towards keep solving those problems or has it not it has and it has not I mean when you don't have a place to stay in when you don't have a vehicle you know your Roy Kaa and makan or you know V or you know vehicle of some sort that kind of becomes a you know primary need and yeah we did solve for that primary need once you know um we got the small exit from cash next we at least ensure that there was a place where you know I had a I had some place to crash and without having to bother about rent or Emi or you know

something coming over over my head so that obviously we went through that route and journey of doing that but you know what a there's only so many homes you can build there's only so many cars you can buy there are only so many brands that you would want to you know crave for so at some point all of that becomes meaningless and that has never been the motivation for us to you know let me okay now my lifestyle is this now I need to sustain that so let me find something that will meet me to go here or to go next or that was never our motivation right it was always about

finding something that you know we could uh find a real problem and to solve that and to create impact and that is been our motivation all through H even in the idea of open I always thought that Finance was a you know something that was a personal challenge for me um you know having run four companies before shutting down four companies is another task all together and uh you know that entire winding winding up process just makes you want to pull your hair apart because that is in closing down that you would have realized that I was supposed to do this 10 other things and which I

have not done and then you have to go do a lot of fific with your ca with your CS trying to figure out you know what to uh what penalty to pay and prioritize and you know do all of the all of that mess so I was always like you know uh first when I was winding up my first company my CA told everything is in one account why Madam next time you decide to do something please have two accounts and separate all this thing all your income and expenses uh you separate out into two different accounts okay at the end of when I was winding up the second company I used to sit with two bank

statements and I had a very old CA who used to give me this red and green sketch pen uh to Mark what and start up it was looking like red red red red red red R it was looking like a blood bath and I was like okay now what this is like two times round and I have to do it for this account and that account so how did having multiple accounts solve for this entire problem then I thought maybe bus I should have learned bcom why the hell did I not do bcom in my life right then I was like is there some place I can go and learn and found a you know 2year program in IMB where you know

they teach about all of these things all the skills that you want to you know learn about uh and to do entrepreneurship in the right way so went in for that program did some B school learning uh came out more empowered thinking now I'll be able to figure out I'll use a quick books and I'll do this and I'll everything be sorted I made a b sheet of my own version and took it to the C and he was and then yeah it was still no nowhere there I mean that requires you know indepth knowledge about working in accountancy and not everything is

available in books it's all about you know how you do things is a lot different from the bookish knowledge that you can get um there are so many more complexities and I was like yeah why is it so tough and um somewhere in the upst starts and code upset I was doing I used to you know uh ask people that what is the finance problem that you face and almost everyone told me the same problem that I was facing and that was my aha moment that listen I'm not the only fool in this world who doesn't know how to do all of this uh it's a mess for all startup entrepreneurs so I

was like oh entrepreneurs bu B school learning so that was my takeaway from doing that and then um SS got acqu I pay so at pay I got to interact with a lot of other non startup businesses right people who used to use pay money specifically so these could be cab rental companies or hotels or restaurants and all of them every one of them was also facing the same problem on how you know accounting is happening somewhere else but the money is coming into the bank account these two don't talk to each other and you always need professional help to sort all of these

things and that was the you know you know motivation for us to start open because if money is coming here and it is getting accounted for somewhere else why not build a year around where the money is that can do all the talking and make the life of the entrepreneur a lot more simple right doesn't mean you don't need the professionals there you definitely need them to do your you know taxes and all of those things in the right way but at least if 80% of the work of reconciliation and all can be solved then why not do it makes sense so it was all about finding the next

problem to solve that could create an impact um that motivated us it was not uh valuations it was not the car brands or the you know bigger homes uh that uh you know motivated us to keep building and innovating over the years no that's amazing I think I think uh it's very interesting mayel that you shed so much light on you know how you went about it and while there was an revolution in terms of Financial situations and Brands and stuff but it's also interesting to notice that you know you kept in your environment stumbling across bigger

problems and you took it upon yourself that you know this is a problem then there's a need for a solution there as well and that's how you started a lot of these companies and and uh that that is very interesting from a perspective that uh not everyone is always solution finding I mean in India we probably try to do some solution finding in our own environments but then now you're looking at a much larger picture and saying that you know some dots need to be connected to solve for that problems how's the Journey of open for you being so far right and you know of course I know a

lot of people in the audience I'm sure know this as well that uh open is a 100th unicorn but I'm sure it's not so easy to build a unicorn as well you know what's that Journey being like it's been full of challenges you know it seems like a cakewalk and you know I've arrived at this idea now that you know this is what I want to solve for and uh you know Anish whiteboard and aish Anda join the mix and uh we finally say that oh we're going to build a bank for businesses next day we wake up and we say that oh there's RBI if we not going to get a banking license how the

hell are we going to solve this entire problem um then we were like maybe we should try partnering with banks maybe you know there let's look at what's happening in Europe us or you know in the other markets uh we realized that banks have been working with fintex um all thanks to the lending um that happened so at least the bank fintech relationship was already there so maybe we should find a bank that can help us build all of this around their current account so that started the quest of you know trying to explain new banking to Banks and uh we went with this nice logo

called more than a bank h open more than a bank it was meant for the user right to say that you you'll get more than your bank account if you try using open but uh the bankers took offensive to it they were like you better than us you're trying to be more than us are you trying to compete with us so we were like no no that was not the entire we completely you know changed the entire branding changed the visiting cards we told the bankers that was not the intent uh it was all around you know people took a bet on us uh because there was nothing to validate

new banking with but when we were able to deliver impact when we were able to see uh show that you know what we were building is going to help um them increase their numbers or profits or you know number of users on the current accounts uh see higher eqs uh being retained in in the bank account the their bank account becoming the primary bank account then some of these uh you know challenges uh got solved that is where um you know we found a lot of interest from the banks but initial days it was all about showing them a PP and showing everything

on PP because there was no apis for us available uh much later ICA Bank actually came back they had to build the entire ConEd banking you know layer uh it took them a year to finally build that and they came back and said that this is what you asked for this is what we have created you will be able to create you know uh a current account um using these apis you'll be able to you know add upload all the kycs and all of that once everything is that that is in place uh it'll go off to our bank sales team where will reach out to the End customer and uh do the final kyc

verification and all and the account is is live and then that can be connected with the op interface so it was a long Evolution Journey it was it took us more than a year to reach that point where you know we could actually show the entire till then it was all about figuring out what could be done right we did an alpha version we did a beta version all of that didn't have a current account linked to the open platform uh it was all about you know you could create virtual accounts you could collect money to that and you could uh you know withdraw it to another

bank link link another bank account and move funds and it it was primarily used for businesses to structure all the colle ctions right that they were doing but it was only when the you know proper current account could be connected with the opens platform that we started seeing retention of funds on the platform there money would come in and within an hour it would get moved out but proper retention of fund started happening when people had you know there something that we learned from the users we used to ask them here what would you need if you

have to retain the money in the account and then they told okay I should be able to withdraw it using a check or someone has paid me a check I should be able to deposit in a bank um I need a you know debit card which I can use for my online spends or to withdraw cash so that's where the form factor of a current account became uh you know critical for us makes sense and U ICA became the first bank to back us uh through the entire thing they also invested in us uh you know much later in our series U series a or series B round I think uh through icsa Ventures but uh yeah it was

sometimes a bet that many others also decided to take take on us uh that you know these guys will be able to do something sustainable that's amazing uh on that not Mabel you we we have heard so much about your entrepreneur Journey as well right and the motivations behind it uh the philosophy behind it about creating impact wanted to check on one thing if if at at all you are not an entrepreneur what else would have you been Mel I was training to be a translator at some point in life that what I was thinking I would at least in my college days that's

what I wanted to do um you know uh that's what I thought I would do but then I became an entrepreneur and then I just loved that entire part of uh being an entrepreneur and I just continued being an entrepreneur ever since nice very cool I mean so any particular languages that you were picking up in terms of trans I'm good at languages in uh my college days I used to translate a lot of Gujarati Works into English MH I wanted to learn a lot of regional languages and translate the regional texts into English language Le that's something that I wanted to do I also

know French and I used to take a part of just practicing translating um by reading up French literature and trying to translate that into English nice and yeah see I stayed in Amad for 3 years while I was growing up if you had 24 hours and you wanted to get your Perfect Day created how would you spend that 24 hours what what would perfect day in the life of meel look like I really don't know an answer how to answer that question I've never thought about what is a perfect day I

just take every day as it comes and I think it is perfect if I have been able to spend some time at home with my family and not talk about work even though two my two of my co-founders are my family members and we live in the same household but if I've been able to get up in the morning and not think talk about work to them and speak about something else and then I come to open and I spend the day here interacting with as many team members as possible and um I go back home and speak speak to Anish about something upcoming new trend I've been able to you know do

that and then I speak to my parents um every day so if I've been able to do that and if um you know I specifically spend my Sundays with my parents so if I've been able to spend that Sunday evening with my parents uh you know these are my concepts of perfect day or a perfect week amazing and and that I think a lot of genzies would be able to relate to this it's not that I can't relate with this I think uh um over the years I've realized that I've been a workoholic and I have uh on crucial Junctions missed out family time right you know

sometimes the people that you love that you take them for granted sometimes a lot more uh so for me that has been the learning right over the last few years that you know I do want to spend like for example my kid he's almost four now but I do spend at least a couple of hours every day I'm in town with him because I want to see that evolution in him as well right it's so beautiful to see these changes that are happening with your family and to spend that time with the family so so happy to hear that Mabel any message for the for the listeners you know or the the people who

are be viewing this podcast any message that you want to share of inspiration of impact creation for them what do I tell them I mean uh most of the things are already known through you know so many portals so many other knowledge sharing podcast that would have happened but to every entrepreneur who is out there building um the journey is really tough there would always be a spanner in your work so your plan a plan B plan C Plan D God knows how many plans you will have to make but always be there to you know once an obstacle comes don't just keep

looking at that problem because it's you'll never Le finding the solution by just looking at a problem but try to look around and see you know if there's some other way you will be able to navigate that problem so that is something that I would tell to every you know Builder that you know whatever you plan for there's no such thing that you know everything will be perfect and then I'll start it's always a leap of faith and you know you just jump and start start doing things but uh then there will always be roadblocks that will come your way it will never go as per your

plan you will always have to Pivot but don't be ashamed to Pivot when you have to do that uh when you have to take a tough decision when you have to take a you know call it quits don't be ashamed you because that you had to do it um be a little more guilt free in that entire process um and then there will always be a better day so always look for the next best thing that is possible um I don't want to turn this into a philosophy but at the same time I feel that is something that is and that's you know people need to be a little Shameless to say that okay this didn't

work it's it's okay I figured it out that this didn't work now this is the next thing uh that could possibly work and I'm going to give it my 100% at that so so also you trying to say that you don't go super hard on yourself don't don't keep blaming yourself no never blame yourself because whatever decision you have taken it was right at that instant in that moment it was the right decision otherwise you would never have taken it makes a lot of sense but that that's so you know folks who are listening to us right now that's the brilliant innovator and disruptor in

Mabel who's giving us such amazing inputs so Mabel on that note I want to thank you for taking your time today and sharing a lot of these Amazing Stories analogies philosophies of life with us and the viewers thank you so much I wish I had a hamper that I could have given it to you right now I'll get it dunod or S to you really not I had a lot of fun doing this it has been just a you know very conversational two friends uh talking to each other I've hardly you know focused on the cameras that have been around uh really not thought of it as something that was filmed

it's a one take that we've been able to complete this entire thing that's all thanks to amazing stories that you had to share and on that not may I do want to add in that uh of course I don't have a coffee with current hamper but our hamper our gifting partner cic design have you know personalized a lot of interesting stuff for you that I'll be sharing it with you and Cupic design is also a gifting partner like I mentioned they create unique personalized and premium corporate gifts that leaves a lasting impression so I'm very hopeful that you know you remember this

conversation because of those gifts as well thank you so much definitely look them up and see if we can do something with open with them as well for sure thank you thank you so much all right [Music] [Music] [Music] so folks if you loved what you just saw with Mabel the kind of Innovator and disruptor that that she is and you know you enjoyed the content the conversation the heartfelt conversation that we had then feel free to share your perspectives through comments subscribe

to the channel and do send us some suggestions as well thank you