SM: Where are you seeing traction in terms of income level? SS: It is unbelievable how wide our customer base is. We were sitting in a meeting with one customer who said it was a high-end niche product, and that they would be happy to roll it out but expected it would remain a niche
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SM: Are other telecom operators adopting this model? What is the business model of your relationship with the telecoms? SS: mChek’s vision is to be a global consumer payments brand. The business model is inherently transaction-based, where we receive a percentage of the transaction. Over a period of time other telecom operators will be launching the product,
SM: When you joined, was it a commercially viable solution? SS: There was a big gap between the concept and a commercially ready solution. We had investments and a team and had to take the idea and build it into a large-scale enterprise system. That took 18 months.
SM: When did you finally move back to India, and when did you decide to do mChek full time? SS: We moved back in 2003. Initially, I came to the conclusion that the business was not viable at that point, largely due to Indian regulatory issues. I ended up starting up the Indian operations for Ketera
SM: What types of positions did you hold at Integrated Systems? SS: I was with them for seven years and worked in a variety of roles. I started off in customer support, then moved on to training, international sales, domestic sales, product development, and marketing.
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Sanjay Swamy is the CEO of mChek, a mobile payment platform developed in collaboration with VISA. The company has enabled users to access their Indian bank-issued credit or debit card via their cell phones. It has quickly become India’s largest mobile payments platform. SM: Tell me
SM: Europe is a big marketplace at this point as well, right? RT: If you look at our historical customer base we are almost catching up, but we probably have a 50/50 split. We also have some Asian customers as well. In terms of an ongoing basis, we are selling more in the US than