UPI Succeeded. What Has India Still Not Solved? | Navin Surya

Our success like UPI has come when we invented what was required for our country to grow. We know that India is proud of its fintech story, especially the whole UPI. What we overestimate is taking success as a granted. We forget that still there are a lot more things that other world is doing and moving. Today we have Naveen Surya, one of the early builders of India's digital finance and fintech ecosystem. Over the last nine years, his work has moved across payments, lending, insurance, wealth, regulation, investing and ecosystem building. With so much of digital payment happening, there's a lot more digital fraud that has also started. We saw all the stakeholders coming together right up to from RBI itself. The bigger challenge that we really have in India is the enforcement and real consumer protection around. But where is the industry going wrong in fact? The problem is that we are trying to offer a consumer a product, which he is not yet qualified for. So your biggest first horse has to be payments for them to get digitized and get access. Second, I said everybody needs to have an insurance for their safety, health and accident, which is usually missing. Third is emergency credit. So what is the biggest risk in India's digital finance ecosystem today? Well, I think we are lucky it's not happened yet, but it can happen any day around. And we are not ready. So you have been a founder, now an investor, you've been a policymaker running the Payments Council of India. You've done various hats and really like serious. But I want to go back to where things started because you know what? I want my bill. This is also to understand that, you know, what runs in that mind that makes it a growth mindset. So you started, you created its cash even before the world knew about fintech. We were still in the physical economy when it came to financial services. So what is it that you saw that others were not seeing at that time, especially let me tell you, the banks and all, we were still not there that you saw, what was it? So I come from a business family and being part of a business family, I mean, whatever I can remember from the very early childhood, like being at my own shop and doing something. And as we grew, we used to do a lot of business. We used to go, it was like part of trading kind of business. So we used to even go and let's say order, procure. Everything was physical cash. I used to kind of carry physical cash in my pocket, go to Kolkata, Delhi. So it was a first hand experience. And as I started my entrepreneur journey, it was actually started in 2000, which came slightly later, about four or five years later. And we knew very clearly that the physical cash issues in India is a big problem. And everything going on, parallel economy, parallel is a different kind of a problem, but the bigger problem was that if more things are going to go digital, how would you actually pay? Money is not, I mean, if money is going to be physical, then how would the actual transaction move? So that was a very simple thesis and having experienced it first hand in early childhood, I knew this is the right thing to do. So it was very clear that the gap, and by the way, at that time it was less than 1% digital usage, which today in the country is around 25-30%. So if you see the jump in less than like 20-25 years, it's humongous and still miles to go. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So you saw that a positive. Yeah. So you saw the opportunity that if everything else is going digital, whether people are shopping digital, then why not, you know, have the. How would they complete the transaction, right? Because for settlement, you need money. Yeah. If that's moving at a lightning speed of desert, this cannot move physical space. So what were you doing that, it's cash, like was it, you know, adopted faster initial years or what are the challenges? Yeah. So we probably got lucky because we were part of the SL group at the time and there were some in-house use cases within our own, like this TV was one of the biggest use case that time. In fact, the problem started with them discussing with me that we are trying to reach to the rural area. Their problem was same. The television goes through physical wire, but only now places where density of population is high, right? If you're to go to villages, you can't because then laying the cable in villages with less population is extremely difficult. So the only answer was satellite. Right. But when you do satellite, you can reach content, you can reach boxes, but every month getting payment from them, you don't have that typical traditional cable wallah going and collecting. So they needed a corporate system. So that's where the whole idea started. And then I kind of started conceiving it based on our experience. And I knew that this problem, what they are facing while we are solving for them, why do we have to do a single mono use kind of, so prepaid card, we've all seen as a calling card, right? Everybody knew that was a solution that time. But the twist that we did is that why should we solve this problem for one company? Why can't we make it multipurpose? So what we did is for first time, the same card can be used or same coupon. Yeah. Yeah. Or a token, whatever you call it today, could be used for multiple services, for e-commerce, for a train ticket booking, for something like something which we did for the first time that you could on text do a transaction, which today, of course, looks very doable. That time, it wasn't even imaginable, right? A very simple text and you could pay and you could send a donation to Siddhi Vinayak and they send you Prasad at home. So those like awesome experience, very early days, it was magical for customers. But did you see the adoption? Like people were adopting in the smaller towns, while I understand, or was it, is it the metro consumers who's more aware has the difficulty or is it, where do you see the resistance? So our take on customer is not based on geography. Okay. And payments is very simple. The horse is the use case. And the bullock cart is the payment. So you go to where the use case is. So let's say district was all rural and semi-urban areas. Train ticket was everywhere because everybody travels by train, right? Siddhi Vinayak is more, let's say, urban phenomena. In and around Mumbai and some rural areas of Maharashtra, early days. So in this case, the transaction entirely or a customer set entirely depends on the use case that you're bringing. So every use case that you use or you bring as an option of a payment, you have to look at who's the customer, where it is, and we have to make sure that our products are available there. We educate them, we do the handholding, and this is how we saw it. And a lot of consumer who did not have bank account, debit card, or a digital experience, we needed a touch point for them to experience, for them to be educated, and also them to trust in case something goes wrong to go and talk to. So we ended up creating this franchise model. But today, do you see that, you know, like we are celebrating the whole digital payments and with UPI and all the success, the entire digital public infrastructure. Today, if you had to build this whole thing, how would it look? If you see some of the challenges that you see, even in a UPI and amazing solution, we are all a big fan, but we do know at the back end, there are times the challenges around failure transactions, the customer servicing, and how do you even further spoon it out in the next level of journey. In fact, part of the time that I spend even with NPCI as a part of the Innovation Council, we were trying to solve that problem way back with a different project called Project Vajra, which was nothing but a blockchain-based UPI to solve some of these problems. It was slightly early, but I think a lot of learnings and those learnings are today being used, I think, in CBDC program, which is a government's, RBI's own currency, or a digital currency. But in today's, with so much of digital payment happening, there's a lot more digital fraud that has also started. Absolutely. The scam, the fraud, and the kind of actual setup which make you feel that it's all true. Yeah. But because these are the big problems, right? People are still unaware. Yeah. So I remember, Naveen, we were trying to do one activation in some part of tier three town of India. Now there's so much fear that even, you know, even doing the QR code scanning, they were scared that it would be fraud. Absolutely. So, I mean, that's the other extreme that people have gone. See, the reality is that fraud in any situation, whether digital or no digital, was always part and parcel of the lifestyle. As the scale grows, the modes and the types of those frauds keep changing. But ultimately, the other guy is out there to kind of get your money. That is true. So every new item, and as the scale is happening, and we do know that at times there are gaps in customer understanding. So we saw all the stakeholders coming together, right? Up to from RBI itself, right? So many advertisements. You would not have seen, if you see the last decade. And before that, you would not see so much of a consumer, let's say, communication right on the television, right? So it's about awareness. I won't say there is any permanent solution yet there. But are there continuous preventive measures? Yes. There is at an association level. There is at an entity level. There is at a regulatory level. There is at a government level. There is at a touch point or a multi-channel point. So everywhere, people are trying more. But like you said, that it's always the case, the human greed versus, right? The human ingenuity and people who are there. Yeah. It's a continuous, let's say, a tug of war. One side keeps trying to find new ways. The other side keep kind of trying to disseminate that information. So work is happening. Do we have to do a lot more? Absolutely. I won't say it will go away. But I would say net-net, I think one big decision, which is globally today, at least in the payment industry, is well respected. And I think now every industry in India anyway is adopting within the financial services OTP, right? The second factor. Yeah, the second factor. And let's say OTP is probably one of the methods. But this whole second factor. The second factor, authentication, which originally started in Europe, but India did it in a big way, every transaction. And the alert. Again, if you see Western markets, the alerts were not compulsory, were not common. Today, everybody has adopted it. The only bigger challenge that we really have in India is the enforcement and the consumer, real consumer protection around it. Those two things, I think, we still have to work. Yes. And even there, the bigger problem is enforcement. Enforcement, true. The actual nabbing of the criminals, doubling out the real harassment. Arrested, punishments, making some sort of an example. And we don't have proper laws, stricter laws. Laws are there, but I think by the time you get, the problem is the system is choked. True. The problem is the system is choked. the infra so i think that one problem we address that's where the western countries have some advantages because their enforcement is very good so consumer feels more empowered and let's say some sort of a protected here we have all the measures in place but because of the systemic weakness in the infra we see a lot more problems let's say the solutions taking a lot longer for them to kind of reach the actual benefit coming takes a lot longer absolutely the consumer is more vulnerable currently yeah yeah but coming to the india's fintech story whether it is a reality i mean it is a reality but is it now a overhype so we know that india is proud of its fintech story especially the whole upi yeah but if you're being honest india now do you think are we the fintech capital in the world but i would say net net if you're not the capital we are amongst top three right and the realities in all emerging and developed or developing economies is still the fastest growing yeah so if you look at clearly order of like us china almost similar and india very clearly and in terms of growth india is still growing faster and the headroom to grow i think india is still a lot more than both other countries so i personally believe that in a decade or so we will be neck to neck with both of them with both of the countries yeah the scope is there the overall i mean if you leave the currency challenges aside but if you see everything else on a ppp level i think you're pretty much there but tell me what is it that china has got from the adoption side whether they had their we pay or alipay and all of that they started early is something that as in india we still i mean what are we missing that they have it and what are they missing that we are really strong at you know so upi is very much an answer right that we had so china had the state support and upi had the same thing and upi had the entire ecosystem aligned to kind of make it happen and that's a success story right probably something similar can happen in the future but i think it's a lot more on the wholesale and uh let's say global international space than the retail space but that's where probably the relevance is a lot more so i would say in terms of most numbers in terms of values we still have a challenge because of the currency conversion but in terms of volumes i think we are already kind of hitting through the roof in terms of growth rates by the way india i remember three years back at gff fm when she came she talked about it that india has the highest adoption rate when it comes to actually adapting to the market and i think that's a really good point because india has the highest adoption rate when it comes to actually adapting to the market and i think that's a really good point because fintech services or financial services across the globe right almost 30 40 i'm forgetting the number but we are one of the fastest yeah so there are a lot of check boxes where when it comes to financial services digital financial services whether the fintech word remains or whether it becomes digital financial services doesn't matter we will continuously grow but india has always still been you know so even in my financial services uh experience we've still been a fidget because we still are not 100 digital you still need that last mile whether in any of my you know it was insurance whether it was housing do you still see us not being 100 digital but this whole fidget if you have to become massive and very big player you have no option but to be omni or a multi-channel which is nothing but a physical model which was what our learning was at its case and that's why we will present at every head headquarter district headquarter level already way back i'm talking 10 years back right so that's a clear answer that ultimately if you have to grow big you have to cater to india which is layered segments layer habits i mean india everything is a thali system you can't just satisfy a customer by offering a monologue system a mono product or a mono channel so if you want to be big you have to be open to everything the challenge however is that no institution no business no single fintech can be specializing in everything that's where the problem is that most of the time the challenge happens when a large institution think that i can build overlight overnight online channel and the large digital players start thinking that hey i can build a very physical channel very fast that convergence i think has to happen somewhere somewhere a respect and people working and collaborating more it's already had started happening those who understand yeah but that is the probably next phase where the more integration more collaboration and i i see and i hear you i even read and you speak about this convergence and i want you to you know tell me more because i do agree because ultimately all the financial services we are either single digit or early double digit penetrated no matter how much we say mutual funds say here by m feed great job still not there all my insurances are single digit you know what i've seen so why is where are we then and the fantastic payment system on top of it but still when it comes to real financial services penetration we are still where is the so i think where is the industry going wrong very very interesting question and unfortunately i still keep answering it after two decades and the answer is still same so i remember we doing some report along with dr vatal committee though it was on a digital play payments framework and a big discussion that we had and personally i had a very strong belief which i said with it which is there in a diagram so at that time it was a pyramid structure which is changing to diamond demography of india right but fundamentally we said that the problem is that we are trying to offer a consumer a product which he is not yet qualified for because initially if you see that the focus of inclusion or driving the inclusion penetration was through banks the reality is the cost structure the access that consumers mindset the confidence to interact with banks was not at all there so it was a very hard kind of a task both sides it was like two completely different ends to meet and it was too hard to work at some stage it started converging by more product but fundamentally our belief and at least i've personally always been championing that see everybody the moment they born the moment they become like little aware they definitely need to use money absolutely so your biggest first horse has to be payments for them to get digitized and get access whether or not it's through bank or anybody but that second i said everybody the moment they start becoming let's say a little bit meaningful they need to have an insurance for their safety whether a health or some especially health probably health and accident which is usually missing third is emergency credit unless you identify player and there are very i mean my microfinance has done an amazing job yes unless we see them as a horses to champion the inclusion to drive it and allow them to cross sell everything allow them to leverage because what we also realize that the the whole problem of serving at that level is that you can't really sustain or survive yeah it's expensive it's expensive right so unless you are allowed to do multiple things using the similar channel with the same customer because this ticket size is an available money so low yes and within that if you just do one service simply you're not visible so we did see some changes if you see in the last program which was more successful on the inclusion which had credit element which had insurance element yes but i still believe that there are still gaps that unless you start from the demand cycle side that these are three basic needs and once the person starts earning he has some saving then the banking becomes relevant then the wealth become relevant then the life insurance start becoming let's say relevant yeah much later but the initial part of the journey we need to champion and empower the initial part a lot more converse a lot more to make it visible thankfully digital channel education is easier access is easier now right i also see one big gap which is more on a business side i think the products are still not matching what they really need no it's not simpler also and i can i have done that work in my you know one decade law experience but it is somehow we're not able to simplify exactly because obviously we also need a lot of our proof and checkpoints and we're not able to simplify exactly because obviously we also need a lot of our proof and checkpoints and by the time if a customer is clicking it is five six seven eight clicks yeah so these two three things we have to put it in place hopefully newer entrepreneurs as they start coming in as the policies are becoming more and more open we will see you have a lot more headroom to grow provided you have the right solutions and the same time we are saying that payments people have adopted now see if you have to learn from payments if that is 30 40 percent adoption yeah whilst this is in single digits so somewhere people are ready to pay which means there is a market there is a demand but something is not going all the way there or we are not giving them the right two things that happened and that post three digital services very well i mean payments it was first demon yeah because you were forced to change the habit because there was no other option yeah so while we were growing at a certain rate it was still healthy but that pushed the change faster correct and then came the covid it's not just post the payments but it also post insurance during exactly so it pushed everything else especially if you see during the that time uh the credit became very big on the digital side yeah right the entire wealth the number of customer so i think those two have created impact and changes which are kind of i would say 90 percent of those customer who adapted that time have retained before that you could not retain them you couldn't that's right the ratio was low and that actually proven to them that this is a lot easier way to do things than the otherwise so thankfully we had some of those changes but there are still other products where we have not seen those events and that's where the gap is but one has to take advantage of those initial learnings absolutely and that i mean you know makes me think that are we then truly building a financial inclusive system see like the other day and i'm going to go on record and say because uh i saw this video by bhaja's group and they were celebrating the 100 years and one of the things anjur bhaja said that we are becoming truly financially inclusive you know in our journey which may so yes they're doing a lot of work but do we really understand are we really doing a lot of work and are we really doing some you know cutting edge work there because that's where i feel china has done something different okay so two views here one is uh thankfully the way the demography has changed and I briefly mentioned about diamond right so you had a very kind of let's say large number of people at the bottom of pyramid that pyramid shape is anyway changing and it's becoming diamond so middle class so I would say the case of inclusion that way is reduced because now and the government knows it that's why their focus of all their money is only for the bottom which is shrinking they sometimes we all crib that government doesn't do for anything for middle class but they know that they have found some way they're better off than the others and we put our resources at the bottom so that change has already happened what we now need is a transforming of approach of a financial health yeah because what we are selling what people are buying how they are buying the problem is that there's a lot of experiments going on there are a lot of other complications that are arising and because of that we are seeing some friction and the confidence and the trust issues so unless we see a health approach a financial health approach 360 degree that financial health is equally important as your body's health and a mental health that's such a big point you're bringing right people keep talking financial health but have you really cracked that as well and what do you think should be in financial health so I think now's the time that the policy makers can start I mean we measure the indexes and payments for an example we measure a lot of other economic data but I think somewhere we need to start create an index or a model around financial health where are we making people more financially independent in the country and what is the definition of that at a different level so where are we truly there are we entrapping them are we kind of really helping them directly indirectly and entrapping could be in different way by giving wrong loans by giving wrong insurance products or not offering the right products or not offering your product or not even a product being rightly available to the right people so you know all kind of things the question is who will build that cat and bring out some measurements to start getting tracked how about you with one of your founders because I like this financial health I keep socializing a lot but in my current phase anyway I'm not spending so much of time on the industry side now so to bring that side of you I mean from a you know from a founder yourself to now an investor with your your beams of fund house what is the chain that you had to transit you know because one is where you are acting operationally now yeah you are so I do a three role one is where I invest my own money where I'm like single person responsible for everything about 15 to 20 companies portfolio some of the big ones are like one card Luxme Castler etc right so interesting so that's there everything is like my money my risk this isn't my let's say reward or penalizing whatever you call it the second is fund manager which is more like beams which is a growth stage fund okay right so personally I invest very early days very early startup and 15 is by the way in like 10 years so my ratio of rejection is extremely high okay so beams is a fund where we manage others money of course we also have invested money so that's a different role and thirdly largely I spend time with founders on mentoring or advising them oh interesting so one big change that I see in all of it if I see on an investor side the focus is always on that you have a fiduciary responsibility to somebody's money to return my own it's the same thing that I have to prove to myself that I'm doing the right thing and also having the right impact when it comes to being an advisor to somebody to a founder it's a very different ball game while it looks while we and my one sentence to all of them is that I have made more mistakes than you that's the only value I bring to the table right and the smartest founders learn from others mistakes it's up to you now it's exactly more like just guidance it's like a it's like a like they say it for angel right you have to just pass on the right messaging right knowledge right connects and then trust them to do the job and that was a big transition I had to make because founders get passionate very fast right so you say something you tell them anything and you want to follow it through happen not happen it's very difficult to let go and trust the process and the system after that so that was a one big transition but yeah now I have been doing it for like 8-9 years 17 to 26 for me the conversation is very simple like we were just briefly chatting before the podcast it's about the purpose what is the purpose of the founder what is the vision behind that purpose does he understand the customer who his real customer is and half the time I see the gaps there itself the understanding of the customer itself right and then lastly but most critical how much he knows about the regulation and the compliance is required that is more critical in financial services maybe not in others though generally everywhere because you're supposed to comply with some laws still if you're running a business so these 3-4 things are generic when I look at it and these 3-4 things I think in the answers you can easily figure out that what he's doing is what he's up to or what he's up to and if that cuts then rest is easier in my mind technology has always been kind of a means to an end not the end game right so you but you're very clear that you're investing still in the fintech or the financial services yeah most of my investment has been around technology or financial services or fintech and I believe if you know cricket play cricket don't try football awesome that's a fantastic insight that prey on your strength exactly so when you meet young founders fintech founders now which is that one mistake you see again and again like fundamentally doesn't change it still keeps coming I think 90% of them don't have clarity around the purpose and vision half the time they think there is an idea which is interesting and in my mind half the time more than half the time is just the feature of a product or it's easy money available they think they can just bring in yeah so you have a good profile you have some good interesting ideas ideas have legs I read that book long time back but again the leg needs the whole body yeah right the strength comes so that's one common thing and I give a lot more importance to that because founder's journey is the most difficult journey it looks very good for a first couple of years it's like a honeymoon but as you get into it it's something you can't come out easily you have to I mean it's not something that you can quit in between you have to see it through absolutely right so for seeing it through the kind of resilience you need you're you as a person needs to have a very strong personality very strong mind frame and those things need first and foremost what is your purpose behind all of this right where what do you want to see for yourself getting achieved by going through this journey yeah why are you doing it yourself so sometimes they have some purpose which is not clear it is like borrowed purpose you can see it through right yeah absolutely so I personally give a lot of importance to that piece that what is the reason that you're doing that subconsciously that will make you a winner or a loser because you're a winner only if subconsciously you know that I have to make it through whatever may come absolutely right so talk me through because you use the word resilience and you know you spoke about failure in your journey you would have seen failures you would have had to pivot because most of the times where people get stuck is because I bought this original idea yeah and now you're emotionally and you're still trying to build not realizing that the world you will have to it's not going so you must have had to pivot absolutely so where what are those signals and how did you you know manage failures so if you see again failure is a part of the success right with as we say with one success you're probably four or five failures behind and they're probably the foundation for that success those learnings are what have prepared you for that success so I actually started in year 2000 there were multiple businesses we were trying at that time the first business was a B2B side of the payments and marketplace okay which was I would say a mediocre success which had to at some stage consolidate then we did obviously we had multiple products and one of the largest portfolio of products some were too early some were too late some didn't work at all so there were a lot of learnings what works what doesn't work we were also doing a lot of travel related services so multiple experiments there many of them didn't work so what we realize is that one has to have a very clear science behind how many things you try at what pace you do how much budget you put in what kind of teams you deploy what kind of people you deploy you can't quit you have to keep doing it to create scale in a country like India there's one common saying that I've been hearing over the last two decades that Indian market most cases is an inch deep but mile wide so it's very difficult for you to build a monoline very big company in a short period of time which means whatever you do you have to have a multi-flavored I keep going to the concept of thali you need to have a multiple flavor if you don't have and that's where most people fail and I'll give you a very simple example what's the difference in a most valued bank and a let's say normal bank both of them have a same license same empowerment same products they can do it's a cross-sell it's about leveraging the same customer for more services and today you see even a bank most of the banks are no longer just doing deposits or a lending they do probably hundred more things and the only way they grow value is by doing those multiple things so the most successful entities in India have had that DNA where they could do multiple things leveraging on their core strength and create that network effect whether in any business including financial services financial services all the more true and interestingly that gives you the highest value of customer because you're able to retain customer in financial services and the life cycle is the longest bank of course the longest but even other product insurance especially if it's a life yeah so in most cases your potential time with the customer is the longest and it could be and if you're a bank at the apex level then obviously it's a lifetime so that clearly says that you need to be able to offer variety so the learning is that you need to have a model where you could keep bringing different flavors and still manage it well which means you will have to be kind of ready for failures the question is how do you take that and when do you stop most of the time people get over obsessed correct that's another problem yes they can see it's not working but because it is their founder's idea they're so obsessed with it they don't want to give it yes unless it is scientific research product i would project sorry not product please give up yeah there's nothing wrong in giving up for the product level not for your core philosophy so you have to figure out that what i'm not going to give up and what is okay to give up yeah so again go back to purpose you need to have clarity that what is it that i am ultimately kind of going to work for and where i will stop where i will not stop when will i stop so i personally believe failures are an important lessons also one interesting learning in last kind of this career is that what looks a failure at one point in time could be your pivot to a success for example we didn't get a payment bank license and we were extremely confident scientifically on every parameter in my mind at least we had 100 percent score and we didn't get it for whatever reasons right but probably that and we were all very upset about it it was a visible kind of a first time a big failure for us as an organization not to achieve something we set out to and it was a personally kind of some bitter kind of a setback for me at that time but if i look in the hindsight i think that's the best thing that would have happened to us blessing in a disguise like you said because that pushed you to that pushed us to become profitable to look at more investors to kind of grow the company we would have either listed if we wouldn't have done the m&a so both options were open so sometimes i've also learned that what looks like a failure could be actually a milestone for your next success yeah that's that's true actually and then the hindsight when you start it's a matter of time in the lens that you see it from yes it's just that at that time you have to be ready to not give up absolutely now let's talk about regulation because regulators in i know so i came from retail yeah first of my experience was retail and i.t and this was all bfsa was new to me one of the things they constantly said is highly regulated you have to be and which is true needed much needed but at the same time it uh does become a bottleneck to many things yeah that you want to do so what is your experience and what needs to change so i think i have a mixed views here there are things where regulators have done amazing job and uh probably it's recognized across the globe right that the way our economy has been managed consistently in crisis which could have taken to a very different time but the way we managed it right amazing so amazing set of people the way we have we'll still say today sorry and what we are going through today do you still stand by it i think so see the situation is a lot tougher on the macros and the way we are managing i don't think there is any other way to manage it so i would say still the history at least proves that whatever they were doing the reality is at the time those actions were taken they were not liked right yeah and there's always room for improvement that's a separate thing but i'm saying generically the history has proven that on the regulatory side the regulators have delivered every time on the macro critical aspects right true yeah there has been on our and again we've seen the fintech has been a beneficiary right the number of license and we at the forefront right we were the first non-bank license right so we've seen the continuous opening the only thing that's something which sometimes i don't understand that sometimes they get over paranoid or a wrong priority mix prioritization mix right like i said for an example if you have to really drive inclusion then you have to give a lot more flexibility freedom support to let's say something like a microfinance organization right but suddenly you start getting paranoid about the risk and then you start regulating like them also like a bank yes right with that kind of a so that squeezes that potential right so sometimes those extra cautious approach can kill a potential prematurely if i compare it with let's say a us market so u.s model is that i've made the highway i've made the lane so fast so i don't have a problem of speed limits you guys go ahead just drive we're not going to have too many speed breakers we're not going to have too many lights just run i mean for miles you can run so you're making it seamless further yeah so you give a very long breathing period for you to really become bigger get experience become resilient yes here i think because systemically we have not made those big highways in our capacity of institutionalizing regulation everywhere you know we want to build every few kilometers some speed breakers yeah what happens is that you have a founders coming in doing a good job every time you do a next level scale you see something coming up to you know prevent that yeah not always but in some cases and sometimes there looks like a slightly excess reach and sometimes it also looks like that is it a tug-of-war between the larger institutions and the new ace players you know and is regulator taking a much higher ground of a safety that okay if the bigger guys are saying this might be right so that's where i have a mixed feeling that somewhere we need to find a balance that until what stage we let them run sometimes the other extreme that we let it grow too big and then suddenly put a complete break absolutely which also is a problem yes right so these three different approaches is where and i think it fundamentally comes from you know in a way that's we don't have a long-term vision integrated policy i was just going to say on the digital financial services absolutely and again it's two decades i've been saying it that unless you have at a country level a very clear philosophy and ambition and the biggest problem again of measurement today fintech where does it get measured in our in our gdp probably in some other services yeah not even in a financial services or a technology yeah so unless you something we know it's big we potentially know but unless it's glaring on the policy makers head that this was so big clearly measurable and now it can contribute this much so the accountability also grows the recognition also grows so we need to systemically look at this problem as a first national level policy our approach towards it give a lot more clarity for a i mean we've seen some vision document for certain segments like payments right like sometimes on the landing and banking but not everywhere but do you have a clear vision document for the sectors and do you have a clarity about how are we measuring and where are they contributing can we get that data to the message and make everybody accountable to it absolutely and in spite of being the forerunners rbi themselves with npci and we've been the forerunners in creating this whole infrastructure digital it's not that it is by the way that somebody first started and we've seen the benefits and we've seen the benefits then why not have the long-term vision and the so you have seen that benefit whenever you have taken it for a segment let's say for payments we did it with npci for gift city we are doing it for certain segments right why can't we have it for the entire sector correct and put it all that together and give a lot more predictability to every stakeholder including investors so you since you said you've been talking about this since two decades you've been an active member and a lead for many things whether through gfr whether as pci whether through your own then where is the what are we not able to bridge the gap i think the prioritization in the government's mind there are so many things happening so you always kind of struggle for it also i think uh see when the fintech was a small industry let's say 10 20 founders it was easy to work cohesively and create that common impact right today suddenly we see a culture in a fintech founders where as you get larger you think i'm good enough to handle my own affairs that's true so i'm seeing that lot more which wasn't the case in the first decade of the industry that people are okay to sacrifice something of your personal entity personal as a personal leader if it is benefiting the whole ecosystem and focus on that i mean some of the amazing things we've created with that whether it's npc or this is gf or the pci yeah but suddenly we are seeing that people who are getting bigger they think it's okay i i just need to grow if others don't grow it's okay but they forget that if the entire ecosystem doesn't grow ultimately it will create pressure on you as well so what is the biggest risk in india's digital finance ecosystem today then according to you well i think one of course you called out early the whole cyber risk in the fraud right that's definitely there second is that if you talk about while we are talking a lot about ai but the other part quantum we are not even talking so the problem is that financial services is one of the biggest user of technologies and there are certain technologies we have no clue even in ai while every company claims that they are ai but what are you in ai where do you fit in in the entire ecosystem will we become a labor's market again like we were earlier for a software in ai will we really create value and how are we going to use if you're not controlling it and quantum which has much more meaningful likely to have more meaningful impact in the ai itself yeah we don't even have him not even yet started we don't even own a computer so some of these bigger challenges are that and again the potential risk of a quantum that will what it will do to to let's say the whole industry in my mind the war that we saw the current war was one uh not one but let's say fought through drones right yes in my mind the future the way the technology is growing and especially in a quantum and ai combined world integrated you don't even even need drones, all you need to do is probably cripple your through digital systems cripple your defense systems first yes followed by your communication which is telecommunication and third is your financial system you don't need to do anything and with the quantum encryption can be broken in few seconds they're not i mean there are some efforts but how ready are we we're lucky that the quantum encryption break was to be due in 25 we got lucky it's not happened yet but it can happen any day around and we are not ready they're not ready yeah majority of people are not ready there could be exceptions so the biggest risk these are much fundamental bigger risk i'm sure government is looking at the defense first and then probably look at communication but the problem is financial services if you're let's say top 10 of your banks financial institutions are compromised you again have a problem absolutely right so where is our work on that how much of again last three years every forum i've been talking about quantum quantum quantum i'm not seeing other than one state talking a little bit about it and some work being done i'm not seeing enough and even our larger of our inter i.t players they keep they were talking i remember about aii but what they have done in so many years in here no no we're still in the service mindset exactly yeah so same thing they all know about it they don't do it they don't talk about it and then they keep giving excuses right so we need to think about some of these fundamental challenges that are likely to be faced uh looking at the today's scenario like you mentioned i don't think the war is going to go away anytime soon in a decade in some way or a form it will continue the way the current scenario is today it doesn't look like winning or losing it just continues you see ukraine it will become a new reality so in those new realities how resilient we are what are we doing about things like cbdc and a wholesale tokenization of currency right why can't we create a basket of countries currency we have the technology we have the know-how we talk about you know using more local currencies can we then bank on some of these newer technologies makes sense i have also been discussing in a private flow circuits that i understand rbi doesn't like gold import government doesn't like the reality is that people love gold everybody's hoarding you would hold especially in india right can you look at a singapore model what they've done they have look at china model they've created the best exchange in china yes a lot of gold has moved from us to china and that is what has created a different level of panic about they created a largest warehouses to store gold yes can we create a ecosystem around gold where you become at least a storage you become a holder you become a market maker for a goal so you can control one aspect of it we have a gift city as a amazing infra so i'm saying sometimes running away from a problem is not a solution or blocking out that problem like we did in crypto what has happened yeah you don't like it nothing so it's neither a successful or a failure it's neither a successful nor unsuccessful but frauds still happen people still get scammed people are still pushing so we have not solved it but if we take a stand and solve it and accept it that this is a problem here we are trying to be in a denial denial is not the solution in some of these things we'll have to first accept first we'll have to strengthen our mind to see the consequences and then see with those consequences what is something we have no option but to do and we should because i think you make a very interesting point on gold right why can't we because today morning i was reading in the papers on news that we have liquidated or we have given to really safeguard again our rupee yeah so instead yeah india is gold holders how do we start you know controlling the prices how do we start controlling the markets how do we start controlling the suppliers to come and trade here yeah and why can't we create a 24 by 7 some sort of blockchain kind of exchange which is a lot more transparent everybody wants to come with all the benefits possible we can run it we have that advantage exactly the kind of human knowledge we have yeah so coming to you come talking to and this is an interesting point that you're making and i hope my listeners you know i mean somebody is really taking note because it's in it's important the so the human side of building an ecosystem because whilst we understand ecosystem but there is a lot so so you as a founder and now you know influence as an ecosystem builder was it difficult for you to move and you know really convince people because not everybody sees ecosystem the way it was so that was always the challenge and that's the biggest challenge whenever you build an ecosystem but how do you drive consensus in an ecosystem i would say maybe we were lucky we were i mean there are eight or ten founders we call us as dinosaurs of the payments industry i'm talking early days more on a payment industry first then i'll come to the fintech yeah the good part is everybody knew that today we don't exist for rbi we don't have a single problem we don't have a single problem we don't have a single problem is that they need to we need to build trust in them to allow us to do more so so that clarity in everyone's mind even if outside the room you would compete tooth and nail in the market with each other but this one thesis that we can't do anything where rbi doesn't trust us 100 right so we have to build that foundation where they see you as not just see you they know that you are the right guys to do it and then you mean to do it right way there may be things going wrong but with their guidance we're going to fix it we are going to work hard on it so that one common thing so that one common theme worked the biggest problem that we saw there that the common customer experience across the financial services product is still not achieved i mean even today there is a friction but let's say it's a lot better than what it was right so that was a common theme that can we come together and at least for customer it doesn't matter who's servicing yeah he needs a predictable experience whether he's buying insurance whether he's and it's the same common issues everywhere yes right whether i'm buying a policy whether i'm taking a loan i need a common minimum basic experience absolutely and take the friction away so that was our theme when we built fcc so i'm saying it was always about sitting down and thinking that what is the most burning issue which is cutting across and the biggest one to solve if we solve it it benefits everybody respective they compete or not compete so that work we used to do a lot between let's say three four of the key founders who would put in a lot of time from their personal voluntary time etc and then we'll come up with that socialize it and then bring people together nice that has been the secret sauce so that has been yeah okay so uh people talk about exists exit as a success story but you know when you let a company go or you also let some part of you yeah as a part of it right because it's not easy you really put in your heart soul emotions yeah um so what is it that uh you have gone through i think i've got better at it because i've done it now three times it's not easy the emotions are not easy to control but i don't know maybe at least personally for me i call it a switch if i'm on then i'm fully on and i'm fully involved then comes the time if i decide that okay i'm off i put that mental switch then i could take myself away completely okay it was obviously a lot more difficult when we did it for the first time but i could still do it to 80 90 level then i i mean while we were doing it scarce we were also doing the payment council of india so again after a few years i kind of switched off there because i said it's enough that i've done failures of chairman then fcc the same thing gf have the same thing so i've realized that over a period of time i also realized that there is a role that i play which is at the foundation level when you have the complete open canvas when you can't see anything because i believe that when you have to create something completely new and no one can see that i comes my role comes the best if i do bring the whole ecosystem together i could do it having done all of it probably when it is on autopilot anyway i don't like it so you don't like that then there's a role you have to play so i've kind of also learned that i'm utilizing best of my skills i'm giving my best of the talent that i have for that phase for that phase and then moving forward because that's also i realized that it's also for my self-learning so partly it was also self is that i knew already payments as my leadership i needed to learn about rest of the sectors obviously we were doing interesting pieces that when you do payments you're horizontal so you anyway cut across everything so partly we knew but the others may not recognize you as that so i said it's an opportunity for me to learn more so like spend a lot of time with nbfc's for an example in the last eight nine years so it was also an opportunity for me to learn rest of the areas and grow financial services you know i find so interesting i mean especially i'm in my this journey myself so i'm more inspired because i also believe every eight ten years reinvent maybe in today's day and age eight ten years is too long but i kept reinventing and from what you're saying yes because if you open yourself to larger things and you carry your strength is where yeah but that switch on switch off one has to learn so looking ahead if you because since you have been quite a visionary in this space so if i had to do a you to do a you know crystal ball gazing and india was moving towards the whole developed economy we said by 2035 2040 we want to be there you know and uh but uh so what are we missing so if you look at ahead at 2035 and whatever what is that one thing about india's digital finance story that um most people are still underestimating where do you see us so one is like i said partly we covered it that one is our ability to create newer models our success is not about replicating and copying our success like upi has come when we invented what was required for our country to grow yeah right we did let's say a couple of other models we have some amazing successes and let's say in exchange some groundbreaking work that we've done uh we've built some very interesting models like gold financing the whole entire gold loan model i don't think it exists so i think we have to reflect and say which is what we are underestimating that in india there are some unique opportunities and some unique models which we developed and evolved based on our entrepreneurial ability the ecosystem the technology and a service mindset that we have we need to keep reinventing and keep building and nurturing that what we over estimate is our you know taking success as a granted all these models including dpi we think ourselves as a big success but we forget that still there are a lot more things that other world is doing and moving and one which is unrelated which i am seeing the whole current ecosystem and what is unfolding is that all smart countries have figured out their independence on energy independence on energy yeah absolutely now i fail to understand that we are a nuclear nuclear power country right right we have ability to make bombs and end up energy why haven't we doubled down or probably 100 times kind of gone ahead and built that capability yeah right so some of these fundamental things which we are taking for granted and still not fixing really worries me that that these are the things some smarter countries have fixed japan had the same problem they fixed with nuclear energy despite all the issues they used it for their advantage yes we have the same capability we're still because ultimately this will impact our segment and the industry as well agreed right so some of these things we need to fundamentally think we can't keep saying that okay we are leaders in this it's been a decade on that yeah because today we don't see if i see next decade ahead i don't see any new areas where we like to do the leader maybe defense to some extent but will we have a leadership status on a cutting edge we don't know yeah because we we keep listening right i mean one of the like semiconductors whether it was the whole energy that you're talking about many areas we are still not starting yeah i get worried when you know we take proud in saying we are mobile phone exporters are we really reality we all know we are assemblers we are the job marketers we don't own we don't control so somewhere this artificial yeah pride may hurt a country not seeing the reality as it is and socializing that to the right fraternity i understand everybody doesn't need to panic there's no need to panic around this also but in the right circles people need to know these realities and they have to actually procrastinate around it so that they find solutions because if they don't yeah we see us losing leadership status also very fast in a lot of ways and if not we already are let me tell you because i think this whole one war what are you going to do you're going to be a leader you're going to be a leader of the entire entire number yeah the reality is as a country so that would trigger that okay why couldn't we just achieve we have all the means right you have the capability right absolutely i think i feel a bit lost because i thought this government has a lot better vision than others so where is the i see someone suddenly the priority is getting misaligned yes that's what everybody or maybe i don't understand what they understand i mean because again at their the dynamics are different so different but what you're saying is most of the circles in the circles this is the conversation which keeps coming that you know so it needs to probably get more noise so that unless there's a noise unless there is a tension you won't solve it yes absolutely so what should india protect at all cost you know i think india is known as the as a relatively more tolerant kind of economy country more resilience with growth that's our advantage so you know this whole diversity and a unity while unity is still kind of a question mark but so generically this whole diversity but still a little bit of a unification that we have to somehow guard or to protect uh and use it for the youth of india everything yeah i mean like i said i keep telling that in our business how do we balance yeah the diversity but with respect for unification even for organization i keep talking about that you need to do diverse products diverse channel so this is a theme for our country we need to do diverse products diverse channels so this is a theme for our country this has worked for us in past and somewhere i think our knowledge status has been going up and down in the world we need to retain and improve on it india was known as a wisdom capital in a lot of things and we keep proving that in between but we're not able to do it consistently okay and we're not able to reiterate that hey still the best talent most knowledgeable still the best you know ideas at least come from yeah we have a challenge on resources that we have to work on but that continuity has to be there that's where the china is doing much better than everybody else including us so what are they doing differently that we should learn i think two three things the best of the talent that they send everywhere to learn they're able to get them back and they don't just say it they genuinely support so much i mean we don't just say for ease of business for a sake of ease of business it should be the actual case so if somebody really is the is the best of the best in a certain area whether they're micro shape or whether a silicon or a quantum if they come back they're kind of the kind of treatment and the advantage they get and this is how if you see today what they're building whether people openly acknowledge or not i mean let's talk about a company like uh i think huawei one time it was a blacklisted today you see their product today you see their innovations what they've done do you see sound me the way the way bringing their vehicles so from a copycat to a innovation absolutely actually made in china we're spending too much of time just talking about our you know past laurels and just feeling good about it we need to do a bit more than just talking about the past i agree a lot more on closing so naveen you have after these roles of you know founder investor policy voice ecosystem builder um what is now that naveen is solving what are you what is this stage of thinking like well it's not just this stage i've been kind of doing it for last 10 plus years now it's very simple question all of us have in our mind some spend times i'm doing who am i that's one simple focus more and more time who i really am did you figure that because i was going to ask you that well who is marine suri out of all this figure that out probably i wouldn't be sitting here but there is definitely very clear focus on at least learning a lot more um the challenge is that every time you feel you figured out you get an answer but then you suddenly get something else so what are you learning currently what's your new passion challenge it's it's so there are two or three things on the personal front i continuously spend more and more time on the spirituality side learning as much from the old documents old let's say textments whatever you call it something i saw on your linkedin do i couldn't pronounce it some sanskrit words yeah yeah so that's my life philosophy it is there's a lot of things that i'm learning from my life philosophy and i'm learning from my life philosophy and i'm learning from my life philosophy and i'm learning from my life philosophy and i'm learning from my life philosophy it says shivoham ramoham what does it mean it says i'm shiva i am brahma and i'm the eternal consciousness oh so this in some ways summarizes who am i but you know our mind still wants it to be proven so you still have so it's still a process so yeah that's the phase i'm in that's where i want to devote more and more time as i can so i'm just going to now change the gear from a more interesting serious stuff to more fun rapid fire um one fintech word you think is overused kyc i think it should be cya don't ask for the details i was just what is cya can't say it on them on the public one bfsi category india is still sleeping on i think insurance and to some extent wealth one fintech category that is overhyped this is an interesting one i think uh it's still payments yeah why i mean i think it's a the hype cycle is over hopefully but uh we still have a lot more to do one fintech category you would personally bet on for the next decade insurance and wealth both actually what you're saying is under yeah utilized finish this sentence the biggest myth about india indian fintech is okay so myth has been this is a business that also has a huge social impact on a positive side but i've seen off late the negative side of it as well so it's more personal not social on that note thank you very much thank you thank you very much very interesting list of questions thank you thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much thank you