On the Blume Podcast, Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar sit down with Karthik Reddy to walk through the *raw* Razorpay journey—the rejections, near-dead ends, and scrappy hacks that shaped India’s payments backbone.
You’ll hear stories rarely told elsewhere: how they built coding culture at IIT Roorkee’s SDS Labs (raising money from the college itself and even sneaking in “presentation monitors” to get approvals), how a simple crowdfunding side-project revealed the broken state of India’s online payments, and why they were turned away by ~100 bankers before one “yes” finally came—with a condition of a ₹25 lakh security deposit, funded by Shashank’s grandfather.
Beyond the anecdotes, this is a deep dive into what it takes to build regulated infrastructure in India:
- Why design became Razorpay’s hidden growth engine, turning a backend product into a visible trust signal at checkout.
- Why “move fast and break things” never works in payments, and how availability—not speed—became the non-negotiable cultural value.
- How word-of-mouth and community groups (Facebook, WhatsApp) built their early GTM flywheel when big players ignored small customers.
- Why tech—not sales or distribution—is still their ultimate moat.
If you’ve only heard the polished Razorpay story, this episode offers the unvarnished version: two coders, relentless grit, and the mindset shift from “startup survival” to building an enduring institution.
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/227rW4Ee4ob6wRT8U7pJ8s?si=c9a3bca90e394dd3
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/blume-podcast/id1651800944
00:00 – Trailer
01:00 – Welcome to Season 4: Destiny Avenged theme
02:00 – Childhood stories and IIT journeys
05:40 – Family backgrounds & first entrepreneurial sparks
06:40 – Meeting at IIT Roorkee and building SDS Labs
10:10 – Funding struggles & late nights coding in labs
12:00 – Early projects: streaming cricket on campus LAN
13:20 – The Microsoft dream: Mustang, road trips & discontent
18:00 – Schlumberger stint & realization it’s not the path
19:00 – Brainstorming weekends → crowdfunding idea
20:05 – Painful payment gateway experiences with banks
23:00 – Naming Razorpay & building without bank access
25:40 – The 100 banker rejections story
27:20 – First breakthrough: 25L security deposit & quitting jobs
30:30 – Applying to Y Combinator with zero expectations
32:40 – YC experience: focus on product & customers
34:30 – First customer at Startup Oasis in Jaipur
36:00 – Razorpay’s GTM hack: startup WhatsApp & FB groups
38:00 – Pain points: banking delays, partners pulling the plug
42:00 – IDFC FIRST partnership & Razorpay’s product obsession
44:15 – Building for reliability: “It’s not okay to fail” culture
45:10 – Design as a growth hack & marker of trust
48:30 – Closing deals because of Razorpay’s checkout experience
49:30 – First investors & angels who believed in Razorpay
50:55 – IPO ambitions vs. building an enduring institution
52:45 – How being coders shaped their leadership style
54:00 – India’s Valley gap: ambitious ideas still rare
55:30 – Rapid fire: proudest code, trends, YC demo day
57:40 – Memorable customer anecdotes & why Razorpay succeeded
59:20 – Wrapping up & Ultrahuman gift moment
#IndianStartups #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital #BlumenVentures #StartupJourney #IndianTech
Brought to you in partnership with IDFC First Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume Fund III portco).