Do you use a mobile wallet? Your instant answer will be Yes. And I will not be surprised to know that you have at least two or three mobile wallets in use. That’s the power of these wallets that are forcing us to change the way we used to do financial transaction earlier. Easy payment with extra rewards is the main attraction of mobile wallets or digital wallets.
So, which mobile wallet do you prefer for your online transactions? PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm will be the common answers from a majority of users. These three wallets have a major share of the market. Mobikwik is one of the mobile wallets that has shown exponential growth in recent years. It is Made in India. Despite big players like Paytm, PhonePe, it has established itself in the financial sector very well. Like other apps, it also provides Unified Payment Interface(UPI) transactions over its platform.
Early Journey and Major Operations of Mobikwik
Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku founded Mobikwik platform in 2009. It is a Gurugram based startup. Bipin is an IIT Delhi graduate and the CEO of Mobikwik. After working in the software industry for over seven years, he left the job to start Mobikwik. He started the firm with an initial budget of $250.
Upasana Taku, another co-founder of Mobikwik, completed her engineering degree from NIT Jalandhar. Later, she did her master in Management Science from Stanford University. Before starting Mobikwik, she worked in top-rated companies like Pay Pal and HSBC.
The company claims to have more than 107 million users and 3 million merchants on its app. You can also use Mobikwik services through its desktop site. The attractive User interface makes it popular among its customers.
Mobikwik also provides offline services to companies like Big Bazaar, and Domino’s Pizza. It helps them to collect payments through its infrastructure. Mobikwik initially started its operations through a website. Later, smartphone popularity forced the startup to bring the app for easy payments in 2012.
The startup also provides loan services to its customers. Instant 3 minutes loan, a credit loan, and term loans are a few of the many loan options offered by Mobikwik. It has collaboration with Bajaj Alliance, ICICI Lombard etc for loan and insurance purposes.
Mobikwik allows users to store money in a digital wallet that can be used to pay utility bills like mobile recharge, OTT recharge, different bill payments, and shopping on different online platforms. You can download the Mobikwik app on all platforms including android, iOS, Windows etc. The services of MobiKwik is approved by RBI.
Recent Controversies Related to Mobikwik
Mobikwik has shown promising growth in recent years but it also got involved few controversies that have affected its business badly. The latest controversy is the data leakage of its users that happened in March 2021. As per the reports, 3.5 million Mobikwik users’ data is available on the dark web. This data includes sensitive information like Credit Card details, mobile numbers, and the other details of its users. As per the independent cybersecurity specialists, this is the biggest data leak in India up to now.
Mobikwik denied such claims, but a data leakage link was circulated over the internet by hackers to authenticate the news. Plenty of Mobikwik users were surprised to know that their data is available on the dark web for sale. They verified the same information with that circulated link and it was found to be true, as claimed by cybersecurity specialists.
The second major controversy related to Mobikwik happened in May 2020. Google Play Store unlisted the app from its platform due to violating the Google Ad policies. Mobikwik had an ad linking to Aarogya Setu App. After the due clarification from Mobikwik, Play Store restored the app within few hours.
Play Store warned Mobikwik for promoting other apps. Since the Aarogya Setu App promotion was in the public interest and the company was asked to do so by the Reserve Bank of India(RBI), Play Store did not penalize the company for a long time. Google later clarified that Mobikwik was banned due to a misunderstanding.
Financial Growth of Mobikwik
Mobikwik has raised a total of $161.9 million in different funding rounds. The startup concluded the latest financial round in December 2020 where it raised Rs 52 crore led by Hindustan Media Ventures with participation from Kris Gopalakrishnan’s (Infosys Co-founder) family office Pratithi. Currently, the startup has a market valuation of $414 million.
In Financial Year 2020, Mobikwik revenue surged to Rs 379 crore that is 134% higher than its revenue of Rs 184.6 crore in FY19.
Talking about the Mobikwik growth, Upasana Taku said:
“This is the third consecutive year where we have demonstrated higher than 100 per cent growth. Our cash loss has reduced 91 per cent, last year on a revenue of Rs 162 crore, we had lost in cash Rs 98 crore, versus this year’s revenue of Rs 379 crore, we have lost only Rs 9 crore in cash.”
Mobikwik has a total of 325 employees. The startup has three main divisions- consumer payments, Fintech, and Payment gateway. Consumer payments are the main source of revenue for Mobikwik. The company plans to start its IPO in 2022. to make the IPO announcement a reality, the company has promoted its key team member Chandan Joshi as a co-founder and CEO of the Payments segment.
