ePaylater is a smart online payments solution that lets its users to “book now and pay later”. With a bunch of founders, Aurko Bhattacharya, Uday Somayajula, Prasannaa Muralidharan, Akshat Saxena and Shanmu Thiagaraja, ePaylater was founded in 2015. In just 2 years, it has expanded all over India and is now integrated in IRTC. Know more.
To know about their journey, we asked them a few questions. Here is what they answered.
1. Could you brief us about how your business model works?
ePayLater is a buy now, pay later solution, which allows customers to make multiple purchases and pay for all of them in one go on a later date. Customer gets 14 days from the date of transaction to repay the dues. Moreover, on every repayment within due date, customer gets to choose from a list of exciting discount vouchers.
2. Which key strategy you keep in mind and share your success mantra?
Our key strategy revolves around making a unique payment solution that leverages 3Cs – Cashless, Credit and Convenience. Our major strength is the convenience that we provide to the customers. Since, there are no bank account login credentials required, the checkout procedure is extremely frictionless. Customers just have to click ePayLater and the transaction is done. Secondly, a large section of India’s consumer base does not have access to credit. With ePayLater, customers can get instant access to credit. The application procedure is completely digital and we sanction credit limit almost instantaneously after the customer fills the application. This is done using sophisticated deep learning algorithms. Customer satisfaction and convenience is of utmost importance to us.
3. “The industry brims with theories on what makes millennials tick.” To what point you agree with this with your business?
Well, there are multiple things and there is no sure short answer to this as it primarily depends on the offering. In our business, it is the convenience that we provide. A product might sound very tempting, but what if it is difficult to use. We like to keep things straightforward, intuitive and minimalistic.
4. Do you plan to expand your brand presence across other regions?
Currently, we would like to focus on the Indian market only, which offers a huge untapped potential.
5. Share the biggest achievement of your company till date?
Well, there have been multiple milestones and our biggest achievement so far has been encouraging notes of appreciation from our customers. We have a high repeat percentage, something we all are very proud of. Additionally, we have witnessed success for our merchant partners and over this period of time, we have been able to build confidence with them and embarked on many joint strategic initiatives.
6. Where do you see your industry going in next five years?
Industry is brimming with a lot of new players in this segment. Competition is going to get stiffer. Payments have been at the forefront of every business and the one who would simplify the payment process will grab a good market share.
7. What makes you different from your competitors?
What makes us different is the team of excellent professionals. Each department understands its responsibilities and works seamlessly with one another.
8. Two suggestions for the aspiring entrepreneur and upcoming startups?
Having your own successful startup is an enlightening journey. More than others, it tells you a lot about yourself. If something does not work out, do not stop. Keep experimenting. At one point, you would come up with something innovative enough for your target market. You never know what would work!
