At PayU, we combine the best qualities of a market leader with the nimbleness and willingness to experiment of a startup. We have the most scalable and stable payment platform in the country while constantly adding new products and services says Mohit Gopal, Senior Vice President and Strategy Head – PayU India, in conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).
Mr. Mohit Gopal, Senior Vice President and Strategy Head, PayU India
India’s digital payment market is one of the most competitive and dynamic segments. What keeps you motivated?
We love the challenges and the opportunities that India’s dynamic market brings. The sheer variety of payment modes, the rapid pace of digitisation, the start-ups disrupting the market, established players looking to add new lines of business, and all of us constantly working round the clock with merchants and customers while pushing the boundaries of payments.
How are you and the strategies of your firm unique from your counterparts?
At PayU, we combine the best qualities of a market leader with the nimbleness and willingness to experiment of a start-up. We have the most scalable and stable payment platform in the country while constantly adding new products and services. We understand how to span both the B2B and the B2C aspects of the payments business. We genuinely want the best for our merchants and our constant desire to help them solve their problems and scale their business has led to long standing relationships based on mutual trust.
What challenges did you witness in 2019? What are the learnings from last year?
The challenge we faced in 2019 wasn’t market driven or brought about by changes in technology or the regulatory environment. It was more internal as we had both a leadership change and also lost some great people who left to start new ventures (with our encouragement and in some cases with our backing).
However, it was delightful to see our teams live our values of ownership and collaboration and rise to the challenge, supported and empowered by a new leadership team. Not surprisingly we had a spectacular 2019 where at scale we grew significantly faster than the market and built new products and technologies that set us up well for the future.
Would you like to tell us about your vision for 2020?
In 2020, we want to try new things and build new businesses while staying true to what has brought us so much success. We will double down on enhancing our payments platform in partnership with our sister concern Wibmo while scaling our credit and data business buoyed by our acquisition of Paysense. On the business side, we will foray offline and build a truly omni-channel business. Having largely won the E-commerce and Travel markets we are now looking to scale our Government and Compulsive business.
We are also looking at how AI and Machine Learning will enhance our business, and not doing it because it has suddenly become fashionable (an early experiment in a reinforcement learning-based Dynamic Routing algorithm is still going strong). Diversity and inclusion have been a focus area for a while and now the results are plain to see. Collaboration and productivity are up and the working environment is electric. We work well together while respecting the fact that we can think differently. 2020 for PayU is the year to Think Big and Win Big.
