Rishabh Jain - Mewt Is A Noise-Free Banking Platform for SME's of Bharat (CEO & Cofounder Mewt)

When banks are opening up their API's to people like us, it basically means that we can reach out to more people and essentially, help them by bringing them into the banking system, improving their credit score, giving them a better line of credit, and essentially, giving them access to safer, cheaper, and more secure financial firms in the future.

Tell us about your life’s story, background & journey.

 

I started my journey from a very small town in Ajmer. Both my parents are from a very humble background, so I got into BITS Pilani, computer science. I was the product manager at Sprinklr and American Express, India. After that, I got my exposure to FinTech. I started learning more about it, like how things are working, essentially automation, and what we can do to take it to the next level. And that's where I noticed that when your parents are there and you are in the non-printed version of the story of the banks.

So, this is how the checks of books were written. This is how you make the transactions work. And I stepped into a mix, and then the more I got into the system, the more I got inclined to understand how things like charge cards work, which is specific to a very small number of companies who can do that, and so I felt that there was a modal system and and we never even saw what was possible. That was the start for me, too. 

I was very fascinated by the SME’s story. I met this SME guy. He had his mid-on the 30th of the month and he got the money raise but he couldn't go to the bank because it was a national holiday or weekend. And because of COVID, there were too many restrictions. And now, he particularly can't pay the money back. Even though he had the money in his hand, and the next step was basically to give it to the bank, he was facing penalties from the bank, and also his credit score was getting bad because he missed an EMI. It doesn't make sense, there's not a 2021 kind of problem. 

So that is something that kind of triggered me, and we realised that the problem is not with the way loans work or with the way a specific type of financial product works, but with the entire banking fabric. We have to change it in a way where you can just make it much simpler. And it has to be much simpler than that, because that is like the means. 

Otherwise, we can't scale it to a national level, and this is happening right now. And yeah, we started mewt, and it is going pretty well. That is pretty much my life story.

How did you start your career & what led you to reach the highest echelons?

I think of myself as an explorer and a person who looks out for opportunities that are just overlooked or just ignored by most of the community. And that is specifically me. I feel that there is something that can happen. Then why is it not happening already? And then that's how I develop my first principles and go back and then understand.  

So, from that perspective of me exploring things that are important. When I got an index, for example, I got into a really hard to believe, but I never knew that there was a thing in which you could go, like international schools or something like that. And these are some of the nuances that enable my internal thinking into how I can push forward. That's the essence. I really started my career, as it just said, as the youngest and the only product manager at Sprinkler India. 

 And to pose that too, I know it's like a little flattering, but I'm still in pursuit of finding out what the meaning of all of this is. Why are all these gaps there overall? And that is where I started going deeper. And then I saw that when we explored this gap in the Indian ecosystem, or you can say SME banking system, we saw that this is pretty huge and it doesn't matter if we become big.  

There is more competition for us. It doesn't matter because, regardless of the total number of indexes in the market, the problem is much bigger than all of us combined. And we have to fix this banding fabric altogether from day zero and essentially make up for that. So this is something that triggers me. There's something that pulls me. If not me, then who is going to fix it?

So my job is the CEO of mewt, I will talk about mewt. So mewt is a noise-free banking platform for SMEs in Bharat. MSMEs have borrowed, and we are not in your bank. The interesting factor in this is that we have too many gaps between so many other companies and so many other FinTech companies. There is a $400 billion gap in the demand for loans in the market space. We always think that this is something that can be solved by just getting more money and giving more money to SMEs, but it's much deeper than that. It's the way people think. 

And this mess, which gets created, leads to those specific nuances and gaps in his portfolio wherein the banks would say 'that boss, I don't know, if I don't even trust this kind of data, or if I can even give the loan." So these people, it's the way people bank that has led to this stringent process of banking and essentially led to banks not giving out the right amount of appropriate loans. 

So, even though banks are giving to the top 1% of borrowers, it's essentially not solving the problem. So, the problem, like the solution, is not in the same area. We have to zoom out and essentially understand what's working.

What are some of the challenges that you face in your job & how can tech solve these problems?

So, these are really interesting ways of incorporating compliance into the system to make it much more secure. And it gets people to give people more trust. And so this is something which creates a new type of nuances to work around, not just work around to essentially work with some clients and enable more people and make something better for the people. And so this is where the technology side of things comes in, especially for us. So we're in FinTech, and things move quickly here.One week, you are working on one type of technology, and the next week, the compliance has changed, and now the technology is particularly unusable. 

And so you can't just put it like this, and there is something that has big advantages. Well, what is surprising is that some interesting people told me that you just put in another support staff for that. And putting more people is, I don't think, a solution. It's not a scalable, or even viable, solution anymore. People are finding that adding talent is very difficult. Plus, having the right talent and then training them, essentially, gets them to the point where they understand and can help people. 

So that is something that can't work, like putting more people on this problem is not going to solve anything. So I like to think smart and work as an engineer from where I go back to my engineering roots, and FL, that you have to keep evolving at the same pace, or essentially even faster, and foresee the changes in the industry and build your case even stronger from that. 

And essentially, building a technician enables all of these things, you know, the better ones and the compliance and the regulations, and essentially makes the system more secure and useful. And so, tech is the only mindful option that can trigger the next wave of improvement, as you can see the next wave of finances. I feel that technology is the tech that is going to be the trigger this way.

What does your typical day look like & how do you define success?

I'll start with the second part, first. My success definition is not personal, particularly since I do not see success, and unlike my level, I see that as an end goal. And my end goal is the day when all SMEs are all MSMEs of India, do not have any more issues with finances, or banking. To interpret it otherwise, the day when the $400 billion gap is closed will be the day I'll call myself successful.

This is regardless of my being a part of the system, or the only mover being just making the whole thing work. This is like my essence, my success is defined by the complete enhancement of the people around me, and I couldn't sit still until that happened. And I know it's a long way, but you know, when all of us come together, just Mewt is the only set of skills capable of making all of that work. You know, I'll call myself successful on that day. 

So I usually wake up at seven o'clock. Check the counter daily for the number of customers when we get and see the daily counters. In the morning, first thing, I look into the matrix, like how many people will be on the front line. Essentially, how many people are there. Like, what are they using? I start my day with, a product that is kind of started with the happy dose. And then right away with one only velocities and not particularly looking into the total number of customer care, that's something which is transient, more looking into how many customers we can get daily. 

So far, I believe we have received 442 consumers in a single day as of today. So that's local, given the velocity right now, then I read a little news in the morning, and then essentially make a schedule for the day, essentially what needs to be done in just three varieties. First things first, what's the biggest thing that is going to move me towards the direction of my end goal? These bearings off by nine listen to audio books on the way. So yeah, definitely. Like, that's all reading books. Now, I'm not an intensive reader. We also have a daily morning call at 10 o'clock. 

So I have one question with all the mewtants. We call ourselves mewtants. Do you have a correlation with returns on the product first thing, then, on the growth side of discussions daily? These are like daily things that happen in conversation and more like an update session with questions like "Oh, under this, this happens on a daily basis." So I've fixed three hours, constantly hiring the right kind of pace and brainstorming. So, thinking about the nuances of fixing things in a technical way, something which is very important. In my life, personally, I feel that some things can just be solved by looking from a different point of view. 

We were talking to many people about liquidity and how businesses are not going to enter the first mode of payment. And the cost and reasoning are because they don't trust the online system, or they feel that the money won't be there, like that. So they go for a check. And so our solution was to let them create an online check for them. 

So this requires that kind of thinking, how to make the process simpler, how can we make them feel that this is exactly how they write things like that. So this is like coming out of brainstorming. Then I might update pretty much what it is like towards the end of the day, and try to leave by 11. And yeah, then again, check the velocity counter before sleeping. 

So yes, like the number of users daily, they're going well. So this is the complete day. This aspect, which I feel relates to the second point, is particularly hard to see if I'm not able to move my personal compass in the direction of achieving the critical goal, which is, my definition of success. And if that doesn't work, then I have to ensure that I work even harder the next day. And as the cycle repeats.

What do you think is the future of banking in the era of API's?

This is the great overhaul. It's a pretty interesting thing that is happening right now in the industry. For example, banks are getting more open to working with fintech, and it's a side effect because the usual method of banking is very crude, offlineand time-consuming. The bank has to open branches to reach more customers. And then, to reach more customers, they have to open more branches, and it's like a chicken and egg problem, and they have to collect more and more money to reach those specific areas. 

So they also understand that the market is growing much larger, the problem is getting much better. And thus, we all need to join hands and essentially take the Indian, particularly the Indian financial ecosystem, to the highest level. We are already pretty good, but UPI, we are doing like 4 billion transactions every month, but we have to be taken to the next level as learning banks, particularly understanding. So there's something that is happening in the era of the easy API, which for us is just another way of talking to a banking user. 

That's one on the interesting side. If you see, the regulatory bodies, like RBI, the central unit banks, private banks, and all the fintechs, are the key stakeholders in making this all work and creating this ideal open banking system, which will make banking particularly faster, better, and cheaper. That's what the startup mindset generally says. We want to make it faster, we want to make it better, we want to make it cheaper if you have to do it on a scale of 1.3 billion Indians, right? 

So this is only going to work out when we all join hands. We have to do everything. It's not that we can just move very brutally and say "turn off your usual banking." You have to check to this because we are those people who cannot just have to a tech system system right now. But to make that smooth flow, we need everybody to understand that this is always going to work. And this is how we should be more open to accepting things. And this is how we can be more open to exploring. So that's pretty much on that point. 

So the one very interesting example of this part is that you can think of UPI as a framework within which you change the entire transactional paradigm of like how banking used to work, especially for individuals. This was a good example because if you're in Bangalore, then you would be able to see your local street vendors, the people who sit on the side of the road, selling some stuff in Bangalore also. Even these people use UPI. Now, they would have that ATM card, or UPI, or QR code with them. And they are accepting money right now. So UPI has proven to be the catalyst, moving into the digital era. We are making billions of transactions happen every month.

 

How do you think API banking & fintech infrastructure can enable scale?

 

The cycle repeats, essentially, the more we will get converted to using the system and, essentially, put more trust in the system. And so the first this is how the complete ecosystem is growing, right, and to and to cooperate to cope with all of this all the fintech including the US will have to work in unison with everybody else to drive this change. And then, like I said, change the complete banking and fintech fabric of the country.

  

So, as of now, the bank's traditional way of opening branches is falling on itself, because of the scale issues. There are cities, and all these things were not that big of an industrial sector earlier, but now, they are evolving very fast. And how to cope with that kind of scale? You would have to open another branch there and then some other cities would pop up and now you have to open another branch there and have to go deeper. You have to move closer to these industrial areas or start-ups.

And this scale is going super fancy because right now, we have like 70 plus million SMEs in the country, and reaching them via offline medium is not the way forward for sure, because even to reach 70 million like the bank has a tap of like 25-30 million SMEs maximum right. So, there is already a gap of like SMEs right now, and the government of India is saying that, thanks to what Prime Minister Modi announced, there will be 100 billion-plus SMEs by 2024. So, we are just like, just three years away, and by majority vote, if you have 100 million SMEs, they are not even able to serve the current number. How will we even tap into that?

So, that is where I think a change is required. And originally, SMEs didn't even have access to good banking, which usually results in bad credit and, in turn, if you have a bank account as an SME, then the cost of that account is already heard from any of the supermarket owners, or the smaller traders or manufacturers. They would say that I get banks can help her, particularly since banks particularly don't give you loans. And this is because the banking system supports them to enable that, and actually they have to go for these petty lenders and pay very high interest. This has to change.

So now, when banks are opening up their API's to people like us, which basically means that we can reach out to more people and essentially, help them by bringing them into the banking system, improving their credit score, giving them a better line of credit, and essentially, giving them access to safer, cheaper, and more secure firms in the future. 

That is what we are trying to do with new agility to your need to depend on your net banking to be enabled. You can transact across any bank account regardless of keeping track of an individual account analysis account per day. And you'll still be able to make payments to suppliers to pay their carrier miles, or they'll automatically do it for you. This is what we're trying to do here. You know, while the world is focused on individual customers or individual people like you and me, we are trying to solve this hard problem first.

Which is your favorite book & why?

I don't have a particular set time to read a book. But I do take my general habits seriously. I do my one Spanish lesson daily on Duolingo. I'm at my 500th lesson right now. And I try to at least listen to the book daily for like 30 minutes when I'm in a cab. 

 

As for my favourite book, I think that my answer would be Skin in the Game, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. There's a specific theme that is being followed in the book, which is along the lines of what it goes into, the most intolerant wins. He says that it is the dictatorship of the smaller minority that actually makes the changes and or makes the bigger changes. And this is something that really speaks to me. 

 

Particularly if you've seen FinTech, we started in the world of like, all the changes started happening because there was some fine, some idea, all bankers were like, "I am sick of paying people via cash, and I can't carry this much cash every day." So let's create a card system around it. People who are most intolerant because they can't carry that extra baggage of cash with them, essentially poster systems, thinking that cards are the future. 

 

Like, that is how specifically, it works. They started with personal finance, with respect to credit cards. We started by giving credit cards only to good people. It's like a very small part of the community. It's like, no less than 3% of the people who can get a card right now. 

And then you're thinking that this credit card using a minority includes people like me, who used to have, let's say, an eight-lakh limit. I particularly do not care about that anymore, because I feel that I should be taking the initiative to shift focus to the larger picture. If I have this, I'm able to make my life easier.

Interviewed By - Anushka