Your Tech Story

mobikwik

MobiKwik

Biggest Data Leak in India; MobiKwik to Pay a Heavy Penalty if Found Guilty

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

Today, data is the most important asset for everyone, and every day we see one or the other news on user data leak, even in the biggest companies have been facing such cases. This time, the Indian fintech company has come under suspicion as recently, the MobiKwik database of 10 crore users was seen on sale on the dark web. RBI has asked the company to investigate the matter, or the company will be penalized if found guilty.

The Biggest Data Leak

Recently many of the independent cybersecurity experts have claimed that they have found the MobiKwik user data on the dark web that too for sale. Another internet security researcher, Rajshekhar Rajaharia, had also tweeted about how he could access the MobiKwik and other fintech company user data on the web. He tweeted on 26 February 2021.

“Again!! 11 Crore Indian Cardholder’s Cards Data Including personal details & KYC soft copy(PAN, Aadhar, etc) allegedly leaked from a company’s Server in India. 6 TB KYC Data and 350GB compressed MySQL dump.”

Source: twitter.com

According to these security experts, the main source of the data leak is the UPI payment portals, and the data is for sale for 1.5 bitcoin or about $86,000. There are speculations that the hackers have created a separate system containing a total of 8.2 TB of data, where one can retrieve the information through a phone number or an email address. According to some of the experts, this data is also available via links, and many users have already tweeted how they have accessed their data (such as credit and debit card details) using those links.

MobiKwik’s Take on the Data Leak

MobiKwik has been denying the data leak and has addressed its users saying that the company has been taking all the measures to secure its customers’ data. One of the spokespeople of MobiKwik tweeted,

“The company has robust internal policies and information security protocols and is subjected to stringent compliance measures under its PCI-DSS, CISA, and ISO 27001;2013 certifications. These include annual security audits and quarterly penetration tests to ensure the security of its platform,” the tweet further stated, “the data available on the internet could have been uploaded by the users themselves on several platforms. For our users, we reiterate that all your MobiKwik accounts and balances are completely safe.”

Source: blog.mobikwik.com

On the claims of various security experts, the company said that these so-called media-crazed security experts have been creating chaos among MobiKwik users and wasting the precious time of the organization as well as members of the media. MobiKwik has also said that it may take legal action against these security researchers for defaming the company.

MobiKwik
Image Source: freepressjournal.in

Also, MobiKwik confirmed that during the alleged first security breach, it had performed a thorough security check and investigated if there was any data leak, but it found nothing. 

Reserve Bank of India Warns the Company

Since MobiKwik has been accused of about 110 million users’ data leaks multiple times, RBI has warned the company that if it is found guilty, it has to pay a huge penalty for that. RBI, being the central bank of India, has all rights to penalized a company that is risking the data of the Indian public.

Though MobiKwik has said that it has already performed an audit, RBI has asked MobiKwik to retain an external auditor to conduct a forensic audit as RBI isn’t sure of the audit performed by the MobiKwik team. The results of the audit may get the fin-tech company under great pressure, as if it is found guilty of the breach, it will have to face some consequences. According to the Reuter, MobiKwik may have to pay a minimum of Rs 500,000 to RBI if it is found to be a part of the data leak.

razorpay logo

Razorpay- A Company Leading In The New Digital Payment System

Leave a Comment / start-up, Tech Story / By

With the developing tech ecosystem in India, competitors are also increasing in the market. Previously, very few people had the guts to take a risk and do something unconventional. But, once a company achieves success, competitors keep on increasing because everyone wants to follow what’s trending. With the developing tech ecosystem in India, competitors are also increasing in the market. Previously, very few people had the guts to take a risk and do something unconventional. But, once a company achieves success, competitors keep on increasing because everyone wants to follow what’s trending. Similarly, only a few years ago who would have thought about money transfer with a swipe of fingers. But, now so many companies are trying to establish easy and secure online money transfer facilities. Razorpay, a company founded in May 2014 and promises a secure, developer-friendly payment system for every Indian user. The platform can access any kind of payment method through Razorpay which includes net banking, debit card, credit card, and also wallets like Ola Money, Airtel Money, etc.

About the Founder

Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur are the founders of Razorpay. Shashank did his schooling from St. Xavier’s High School, Patna. He went to IIT Roorkee and completed his bachelor’s in Computer Science and was also a part of Y Combinator 2015.

While his time at IIT, Shashank worked as the summer intern at the University of Minnesota and also at Microsoft during the next summer. He joined SDSLabs and worked there as the Vice President for one year. Before founding Razorpay, Shashank worked at Microsoft as a software development engineer.

Harshil also went to IIT Roorkee and was an employee at SDSLabs. He also worked at Schlumberger as Wireline Field Engineer for nine months. Currently, Harshil serves as the CEO of the company, Razorpay.

The Initial Stage Of Razorpay

The start-up started through the Y Combinator program and initial it raised $2.5 million in the seed funding round. The seed funding round was led by Matrix Partners along with other investors which includes Jeff Huber, Justin Kan, etc. In 2015, the company raised another $9 million from the funding round led by Tiger Global.

The founders started the company in Jaipur and in 2015 they shifted the headquarters to Bengaluru. The company had a fifteen-member team by this time. The money that was raised in this round was planned to invest in exploring other segments of the payment industry and building other products.

Baby Steps

When Shashank and Harshil co-founded Razorpay, a lot of competitors were already present in the market. So, they set small goals and gradually expanded the company. The best thing about using Razorpay is the user can carry out a transaction using the 2G net. So, within a couple of years after founding Razorpay, the users witnessed a 30% higher success rate. By the end of 2015, 1,800 merchants were using the platform of Razorpay.

Many start-ups also started using Razorpay as their primary money transaction platform. The start-ups include Lookup, LocalOye, NeoStencil, and many more.

Getting Bigger

In 2016, Mobikwik came into a partnership with Razorpay. This gave Razorpay access to Mobikwik’s Power Wallet API and the success rate increased. By this time, Razorpay did business with 3,000 merchants and they were expecting 1,000 more by the end of the year. After the partnership with Mobikwik, the business deals of Razorpay increased geometrically.

The code of conduct

Shashank said that his time in Microsoft taught him the quality of leadership. The one thing and the founding rule of Razorpay are that be honest with your clients. Shashank follows it strictly and he expects every employee of his office to maintain this standard.

Success

In 2018, Razorpay raised $20 million from Tiger Global and Matrix Partners. In 2017, Razorpay came into a joint partnership with Telegram for chatbot payments. This Company came up with its advanced version of Razorpay 2.0 during this time.

In 2019, the company raised $75 million from the funding round led by Ribbit Capital. After this round of funding, the company raised a total funding of $450 million. They have also declared that the new funding will be invested in new sectors of the company. Currently, they are focusing on the neobanking platform Razorpay X and its lending arm Rayzorpay Capital. This strategy is a part of Rayzorpay 2.0.

MobiKwik

Bipin Preet Singh : The Journey from IIT Delhi to Founding MobiKwik

Leave a Comment / Founder, India, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Here’s a story of another successful IITian whose name got added to the already glorious record of entrepreneurs from IITs. Bipin Preet Singh has become quite a significant figure in the start-up society after he launched MobiKwik in 2009.

MobiKwik is a Gurgaon based Indian start-up which provides a mobile application to carry out online payments. Hence, it contributes largely to the initiative taken to digitalize the payment system in the country. The company also built its Lite app in 2016 so that anyone with poor internet connectivity can also access the application.

Before founding MobiKwik, Singh explored different kinds of job which included Training Facilitator and SoC Architect.

Early Life and Early Career

Bipin Preet Singh MobiKwik
Image Source: inc42.com

Bipin Preet Singh graduated with a B Tech degree in Electrical Engineering in 2002 from IIT Delhi. Soon after graduating from college, he started working for Intel as the Senior Design Engineer. He worked there for three years in the Whitefield Project in Bangalore which has Intel’s first-ever project, including the server microprocessor designing. He worked mainly on circuit designing and formal modelling of microprocessors.

After leaving Intel in 2005, Singh joined Janaagraha in 2006, as a training facilitator. During his time in this company, he worked to build up a social awareness program (India’s first such program), which was mainly targeted to motivate the students and IT professionals to think of democracy beyond voting. This was a bit unusual profession to be picked up by an IITian, but he conducted training series in companies like Dell, NVIDIA, which exposed his skills and helped him fetch better career opportunities.

Bipin Preet Singh joined NVIDIA as a Platform Architect in 2006, while he continued working at Janaagraha. He worked there with a high-level global architecture team and dealt with some of the most complicated projects around the world. He also developed architectural infrastructure for RAID and SATA/AHCI.

In May 2007, Singh joined Freescale Semiconductor as an SoC Architect and worked there for two years. His main work in this company was to generate and analyze performance models, work on memory technologies, propose new features for Motorola Chipsets etc.

By this time, Singh already gained a work experience of 7 years, and the learning phase was about to get over. Moreover, the companies he worked for gave him a pretty dominant position, so he wasn’t looking for a promotion at all. This is when he thought of building something of his own, something more challenging and daring than regular 9 to 5 job.

From Designing Engineer to an Accomplished Businessman

In his entrepreneurial journey, Singh approached and got rejected by many people. But, finally, an old friend of his was very impressed by his idea and agreed to join him in this venture. He kept meeting people and built up his own team from scratch.

Finally, in April 2009, Singh along with his wife, Upasana Taku, founded MobiKwik with a motto to improve the payment system and money transfer scenario. Initially, MobiKwik only had a closed wallet facility, but later the company launched a mobile application for the same. When Singh and his wife founded the company, he invested eight lakhs from his own money and rented an office in Dwarka, Delhi.

Success of MobiKwik

MobiKwik was started as an initiative to eradicate all the payment problems and set up a hassle-free environment for the transaction. They set up a wallet system, where after saving the money, one can use it for different purposes like phone number recharge, payments to online merchants, and different service providers.

In 2012, the company launched the e-wallet system of MobiKwik, and in November 2016, it brought the MobiKwik Lite mobile app to the market. In 2014, the company won the mBillionth Award South Asia in the category of mobile business.

By April 2015, MobiKwik had around 15 million users, and according to Forbes magazine, one million new users were added every month. MobiKwik also started giving loans of a small amount (500-2,500 Indian rupees) in partnership with CashCare. By 2016, the number of users hiked to 55 million from 15 million. In February 2017, MobiKwik announced that the company is going to invest more in expanding the user base to targeted 150 million. By 2017, maximum e-wallet transactions in our country were done through Paytm, ITZCash and Mobikwik.

Today, MobiKwik connects 105 million of its users to over 3 million merchants providing a huge spectrum of services including insurance, investments and loans. MobiKwik’s next target is to reach a billion Indian users and hit $20 billion by 2022.

MobiKwik to take on Paytm with new funding round

News, start-up, Tech News / By

Paytm, India’s leading wallet and payments company now backed by high-profile investors like Alibaba and Softbank, has always been on the top when it comes to digital payment market in India. Call it the first mover’s advantage at work. On top of that, last year’s demonetization came like a sweet spring for the whole online transaction business in India. Paytm was the biggest gainer of demonetization among all wallet businesses in India. But, there is another wallet and payments solution that is growing quickly, MobiKwik.

MobiKwik- the brand which focuses entirely on mobile payments and stands second to Paytm in India- is pretty confident that the company can convert their unidirectional approach towards online payments into an advantage when competition is focusing more towards diversifying into other fields like e-commerce and banking.

Recently, in a talk with TechCrunch, Co-founder Upasana Taku confirmed that they are currently in a negotiation for an investment of $100 million-$150 million which is going to come at a valuation of $1 billion. Taku declined, when asked about the major names her company is going to receive funds from, but made it clear that there is only one major strategic investor involved along with some financial institutions. Expect the round to be closed in next couple of months, putting the company into much valued tech unicorns club.

Well, that’s a lot of money to put into a strategy and we hope MobiKwik has a polished one as they are going against Paytm; top of the league. As of now, plan is to invest around $45 million on expanding the brand’s presence and offices to new users and merchants.

Paytm is pushing its business into e-commerce, influenced by Alibaba’s presence. That’s not it, they are stepping into digital banking as well and if the sources are correct, there is yet another project which is going to launch soon and drives heavily from Chinese market.

“It is reneging on payments while it is pushing bank and e-commerce services. Something’s got to give, it is not possible to do justice on 10 different verticals.” She told to Techcrunch. She also quoted Ola money’s example to justify her statement. “I don’t see Ola Money accepted in many places”

Upasana Taku  also opened up about the company’s future goal of providing financial services like insurance, loans, and investing alongside partners, all via co-branded wallet app. Today digital payment accounts for just 15 percent of the total amount of $1.5 trillion in India and she believes that number can increase up to even 70 percent in next few years.