77: From Driving Mustang to Building a Unicorn | Shashank Kumar, Founder of Razorpay

Billion Moonshots

Shashank Kumar is co-founder of Razorpay - a $7.5B fintech giant in India. He graduated from IIT Roorkee, worked at Microsoft in Seattle, was driving Mustang, and still felt he could do more. So he flew back to India and built a unicorn.

We talked about life post-graduation, living in US, convincing dad to move back to India, early days of Razorpay, getting into YC, imposter syndrome, and much more.

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GUEST LINKS

Twitter: https://twitter.com/shashank_kr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumarshashank/

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OUTLINE

(0:00) Driving Mustang at 22

(4:58) Life in US post IIT

(9:02) Origin of Razorpay

(15:03) Dad's reaction to coming back home

(18:06) Finding Product-Market Fit

(21:20) How Y Combinator took growth to another level

(26:21) Paid 25 lacs to get a Payment Gateway License

(30:20) Imposter Syndrome

(34:51) Hiring first 10 employees

(38:53) The story behind the name 'Razorpay'

(40:43) RBI driving innovation in the Indian fintech ecosystem

(43:08) Living with co-founder even today

(44:57) Future of Tier 3 & Tier 4 cities

(48:12) Philosophy of Money

(52:07) Day in Life as CTO of a unicorn

(54:13) Razorpay's Web3 strategy

(56:45) Reverse Brain Drain

(1:02:56) Dad's Reaction today [MUST WATCH]

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