SANJAY GHODAWAT UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR

SCHOOL OF COMMERCE AND MANAGEMENT

DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT

Program and Year: MBA II Semester – IV

Course Code MMC604
Course Title Entrepreneurship Presented and Submitted by:
Assignment No.  2 (Part-2) Roll No. PRN No. Name of the Student
Assignment Title
AN INSPIRING JOURNEY OF WOMEN  18MB01  18CM208161061  Giriraj Baldawa
ENTREPRENEUR
 18MB13  18CM208161013  Ashish Darak
Type of Assignment Case Presentation & Report Submission
Day and Date of Presentation  Friday- 03/04/2020
 INTRODUCTION

 No doubt, women have proved themselves by playing a crucial role in a big organization. There

are not any sectors has left for women where they are not working equally as men.

 Today I’m sharing a women success story who is the founder of Zaakpay and Co-founder of

MobKiwik co-founder Upasana Taku. The mobile wallet has become a buzzword today. I’m
sure you have heard or used the mobile wallet called MobiKwik. So, let know more about her and
how she got into this business.

 Upasana Taku is one of the most successful women entrepreneurs who is not just the founder

of Zaakpay but also co-founder of MobiKwik.

 MobiKwik makes payment easier through mobile phones. The company
was found in April 2009. The company has headquarters in Gurgaon India.
Currently, the company has more than 10 million users across the country.
The founder of this company and her husband Bipin Preet Singh and
Upasana Taku expanded the business by adding few incredible services like
a small loan, launching MobiKwik lite for those areas where have slow
speed internet.
ABOUT UPASANA TAKU
 Born in Gandhinagar, she completed her schooling
in Surat.
 Upasana Taku has graduated from Stanford University in
Management Science and Engineering, MS and B.Tech
Industrial Engineering from National Institute of
Technology, Jalander, India.
 Upasana Taku cares about some of the different causes in
the areas of Children, Education, Health, Arts and
Culture.
 She has over 14 years of experience in Payments &
Financial Services.
 Upasana Taku was always raised with great expectations
and aspirations.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
 Upasana Taku is married to Bipin Preet
Singh, one of the Cofounders of
MobiKwik.
BUSINESS IDEA
 However, things were set to fall in place for the ambitious start-up
girl.
 In December 2008, she met her to-be husband through some common
friends. He was working with a Noida-based chip company. His group
of friends wanted to start an e-wallet firm, but eventually, it so
happened that only Singh and Taku ended up being the last two who
were interested in taking the idea ahead.
 In August 2009, Singh started MobiKwik and Taku joined him five
months later. 
 While MobiKwik as an idea sounded great, executing it was quite a
challenge. “We faced a lot of resistance from the banks. No bank was
ready to give us a platform initially. Our first bank and telco deal was
a big achievement for us. From there getting to our first 10,000
customers was even harder,” describes Taku. 
 There were moments of self-doubt early on in the first year when she felt
that maybe MobiKwik wouldn’t work out. “The product was up, but the
pick-up was not very good. We were boot-strapped. One of our core
members left, so morale was low. We set a deadline that if we couldn’t
crack a deal in one year’s time, we would start looking for jobs,” she
recalls. 
 According to her, it was an uphill task for them to convince the first few
partners and their first few employees. “It took us nine months to complete
the first deal. The second one happened within the next 20 days. Even
hiring the first employee was tough. You needed to convince a person that
s/he should work 15 hours a day for peanuts,” confides Taku.  Once their
first deal came through, there was no looking back.
ABOUT MOBIKWICK

 With an aim to make personal wallet redundant, MobiKwik in one of the

largest mobile wallet in India.
 MobiKwik wallet works in a simple way. It allows Indian consumers to
store money in a virtual wallet and then use it across channels (mobile,
desktop, tab, sms, ivr) to pay utility bills and shop using wallet with
registered merchants.
 For example, as a user you could use it to recharge your mobile via
MobiKwik Android/iOS/BB/Windows App, or use it to buy bus tickets on
any popular bus booking website or order and pay for pizza on the phone.
It is a prepaid financial instrument approved by Reserve Bank of India.
 The initial service provided by MobiKwik was a website with a closed
wallet facility, but over the years, MobiKwik extended their service to mobile
apps.
 Today MobiKwik has transformed itself into a full stack fintech company. One
can do bank transfers using MobiKwik, and can also take loans. MobiKwik
has tie-ups with NBFCs like Bajaj Finance, Aditya Birla, and DMI Finance. As
for loans, MobiKwik has many options like an instant 3 minute loan, a credit
line and a term loan.
 It has also tied up with ICICI Lombard for accidental insurance, and also
offers several other insurance products like Online fraud protection, dengue
insurance, hospital cash etc to name a few.
JOURNEY TOWARDS ENTREPRENEURIAL CAREER /
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
 The journey of Upasana with MobiKwik has started when she met Bipin, who was very
much eager and interested in taking up a start up.
 Once Upasana felt that even she has the same interest areas, initially she started helping
Bipin in some of the business aspects and at the state when she realized the she was
confident about the business, she joined MobiKwik as full time Cofounder.
 Apart from being a Cofounder, Upasana is also responsible for all the business operations,
identification, acquisition and retention of talent and all bank related partnerships.
 Upasana Taku is a hard worker and always loves the job which is evolving all the time.
The dedication and commitment of Upasana is to such an extent towards work that she
even worked on her wedding day and shared the lunch with her team.
 Upasana has served MobiKwik and transformed as the Indian mobile wallet which is used
by millions of Indians and thousands of platform merchants. Through all thick and thin
Upasana always stood cash-strapped, which made Upasana achieve the milestones.
 Upsana Taku during her days at Stanford
University

Taku with MobiKwik’s women

employees
CHALLENGES
 One of the major difficulties she faced was of her gender.
 Hiring employees was one the major challenge at that time as it was a startup
company which was initially started in a two room flat
 Another significant challenge was to have people accept the concept of something
like MobiKwik where there is a vast diversity in language, culture, and shopping
perspectives.
 Some of the government rules and regulations such as compilation of the KYC
Norms turned out to serious challenge for all the wallet players of the market as
there was a drastic decrease in the number of transactions related to digital
payment.
 Managing finance at MobiKwik, she was once by a
CA and a potential investor over a phone to hand
over a call to man.
 She observes that accepting woman at such a
dominating is unsettling.
 It was only Upasana Taku, who carved out this
challenge as a path leading to new opportunities, in
spite of unavoidable initial hiccups. Upasana was
successful in surviving in the market. The other
players those who are not serious in doing business
sidelined by this new KYC Norm. This has taken
up by Upasana as a provider of new business
opportunities.
 And this is why she talks about courage that a
woman has to take when in the helm of affairs.
ACHIEVEMENTS
 In 2014, MobiKwik received an award called mBillionth Award South Asia
in the category of mobile business.
 In 2016, She was featured on the Forbes Asia “Women To Watch” list.
 In 2017, MobiKwik co-founder Upasana Taku awarded best woman
entrepreneur
QUALITIES AS AN ENTREPRENEUR

 Work Life Balance

 Leadership Quality
 Hard Work
 Patience
 Take charge
 Choose happiness
TAKE AWAY…..
 Be self confident.
 Maintain Work life Balance.
 Take courage and break the thinking of people.
 Have patience to make things work.
“ NOTHING WILL
WORK UNLESS
YOU DO ”
THANK YOU…….