EasyPay aims to be USD 100 mn revenue company by FY22

"We expect 50X growth -- a combination of increase in revenue for merchants, increase in number of transactions and increase in merchant base -- in the coming two years and the partnership with AWS will take us to the next level," he said. Also, being governed by RBI rules, AWS has helped EasyPay with the right security specs to ensure safety and security of transactions on the platform, he added.

Ahmedabad-based fintech start-up EasyPay is confident of becoming a USD 100 million (about Rs 730 crore) revenue company by FY22, driven by strong growth in number of transactions as well as merchant additions on the platform. The company started offering 'Paisa Nikal' service in late March this year which allows users in tier-II and III cities and rural parts of the country to get cash by visiting local retailers, instead of ATMs.

"Retailers have cash coming in as revenue which we help disburse to customers, and the amount is credited to the merchant's accounts digitally...ATMs are scarce in remote towns and villages...By integrating with Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS), Paisa Nikal enables customers to get cash without looking for ATMs," EasyPay founder and MD Nilay Patel told PTI. He added that Paisa Nikal facilitated about Rs 2,000 crore of cash withdrawals during April-August 2020.

"Pre-COVID, we were witnessing about 50,000 transactions a day and 6,000-7,000 bank balance inquiries. This zoomed to 3,00,000 transactions a day and 50,000-60,000 bank balance inquiries post the lockdown was lifted. "In FY21, we are looking at 6-7X growth in the number of transactions, making it around 1 million transactions a day," Patel said.

He said the bootstrapped company, which is already profitable, expects to be a USD 100 million revenue company by the end of FY22. He added that the company's focus has been on empowering small retailers, especially in rural areas.

However, a major challenge was to scale up as transaction volumes increased and to keep transaction time low. "Our challenge was to bring down transaction time from 1 minute to under 5 seconds to make it a seamless product. That is when we engaged with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and developed a solution that brought down the transaction time to under 5 seconds," he added.

Patel noted that Amazon CloudFront solution helped improve transaction time and scalability, while Amazon Aurora facilitated scalability and reliability as a database. "We expect 50X growth -- a combination of increase in revenue for merchants, increase in number of transactions and increase in merchant base -- in the coming two years and the partnership with AWS will take us to the next level," he said.

Also, being governed by RBI rules, AWS has helped EasyPay with the right security specs to ensure safety and security of transactions on the platform, he added. Apart from facilitating cash payments to customers via merchants, Easypay also supports payments via Aadhaar Pay, domestic remittances and fund transfers.

EasyPay Director Strategic Alliances and Communication Hrishikeish Shirodkar said the company had started a pilot run just before the pandemic hit the world, and during April-June period, it was fully active and operational with a sizable penetration in three states. "While the pandemic brought on its own set of challenges, we could do real-time testing...Today, we have expanded to a total of 14 states primarily across north and central India with a small presence in the east with West Bengal...(Additionally) our recent pilots have already begun in the southern markets and the response has been fabulous," he said.

Beginning from April, EasyPay's growth rate is 250 per cent in terms of transactions and revenue (April-August period), he added. Patel said currently more than 1 million merchants have downloaded the app.

"We are onboarding 1,000-2,000 merchants daily. We expect growth in merchant base to be 5-6X by FY21, to grow from current 3,00,000 to 1.5 million merchants who are active on our platform," he added. The company also intends to expand headcount from 45 currently to 100 by the end of FY21.

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