Hyderabad-based entrepreneurs make bill payments easy in rural areas
Hyderabad: Most innovative ideas come from our own experiences.
For Hyderabad-born entrepreneur Bharat Gutta, his moment of eureka came when he visited his grandmother at the start of the pandemic. Gutta was already working on developing a product for financial inclusion and his trip to his village showed him the path.
As an urban-born techie, he thought that paying utility bills like electricity, water, and cable TV could be done at the click of the button. However, when he had to make a trip down the nearest billing centre in his village, he realised how digitisation was almost nil in these places.
“I thought to myself, why can’t we roll out a product that eases this burden for bill payers and also provides an extra opportunity to the existing bill collectors,” says Gutta who spoke to two of his childhood friends Vineet Dontamsetty, Akash Chode about this. Thus was born Nayaseva.
The idea of the startup is simple – turn cash transactions into cash-based digital transactions. In simpler terms, the product provides a doorstep bill payment solution for people living in the hinterlands whose income is below Rs 3 lakh/annum. They targeted the cable TV operators who act as a bridge between the payers and billers. The startup has created three different types of infrastructures – Point of Sale infra, WhatsApp bot, and doorstep collection using its proprietary app called NPay.
“We provide training to our agents – who are mostly cable operators – on how to use our different services. Currently, we are operational in the NPay and PoS mode, while the WhatsApp bot will be out on August 15. The bill payments are enabled by Bharat Bill Pay and the agent collects cash from the payee for different utility services. Once the cash is collected, the payee gets a receipt through the PoS machine that is powered by MSwipe, to avoid any fraud,” says Gutta.
The WhatsApp bot, unlike the existing digital infra of bill payment platform, is more user friendly, according to Gutta, and provides a seamless experience for paying bills online.
The startup, which is part of T-Hub’s T-Angel programme, already has tied up with many cable operators in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. By the next financial year, the company plans to onboard 90 operators.
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