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How Prajit Nanu Built One of the World's Largest Payments Networks · The Stable Pulse

• 0:00
  Intro: Passage of the stablecoin legislation drafted by the Senate doesn't degree in Senate.
• 0:04
  Intro: Because analysts saying a wave of competition can complicate things.
• 0:08
  Intro: Hi everyone, we are with another episode of CEOP.
• 0:18
  Intro: Today we have Project Nano from Neom.
• 0:22
  Intro: Project, thanks for coming, George.
• 0:25
  Prajit Nanu: No pleasure.
• 0:26
  Prajit Nanu: Pleasure, Bam.
• 0:26
  Prajit Nanu: Thanks for having me.
• 0:28
  Bam Azizi: Yeah, super excited for today's session.
• 0:30
  Bam Azizi: There's a lot of things we can cover, a lot of exciting news that recently you guys announced.
• 0:36
  Bam Azizi: If you don't mind, tell our audience how did you start your first business when you were a kid and then uh and growing up, how did you become an entrepreneur?
• 0:56
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, like um uh you know thanks, Bam, again.
• 0:58
  Prajit Nanu: Like it's yeah, I I had an interesting childhood.
• 1:01
  Prajit Nanu: Uh the reason I say interesting childhood is because I lost my parents very early.
• 1:05
  Prajit Nanu: Like I lost my mom at six, dad at 12.
• 1:07
  Prajit Nanu: It it kind of defines the person you tend to become.
• 1:10
  Prajit Nanu: And like uh my favorite joke on this is I grew up uh when I was born, we were very wealthy, and when my parents passed away, everything went away.
• 1:18
  Prajit Nanu: So it was always a uh it was always a tough childhood.
• 1:22
  Prajit Nanu: I think say till I was like 24, 25, it was always like uh all the money is uh earned when to pay the bill.
• 1:29
  Prajit Nanu: Like, in fact, I still remember uh I uh my second job, uh I got a nice 30-40% salary hike, uh uh a big jump, and I still remember going to the bank and saying, Oh my god, like finally I have some money, and then getting a call from family saying, Hey, there's something which needs to be paid.
• 1:46
  Prajit Nanu: And uh I was like, okay, that basically meant that my whole salary goes to pay that bill uh for that month, and I was back to uh zero.
• 1:54
  Prajit Nanu: So, like very interesting childhood, but I I I you know I have no regrets.
• 1:59
  Prajit Nanu: I love every part of it because it defined the person I landed up becoming.
• 2:03
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, right.
• 2:04
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, my father was an entrepreneur, so I always realized the fact that entrepreneur gives you a massive amount of flexibility to build what you want and scale how you wanted fit to scale.
• 2:17
  Prajit Nanu: Uh got out of college.
• 2:19
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, I've been, you know, I was telling someone yesterday that I've been working since the age of 20, right?
• 2:24
  Prajit Nanu: Like I'm 44 right now.
• 2:25
  Prajit Nanu: So started uh working at the age of 20.
• 2:28
  Prajit Nanu: Uh uh was lucky to get like good breaks, so uh a great corporate career in that aspect.
• 2:35
  Prajit Nanu: Uh worked for a decade, uh, and I always wanted to do something of my own.
• 2:40
  Prajit Nanu: So, you know, like in back in 2014, I had a personal challenge of moving money.
• 2:44
  Prajit Nanu: So, unlike most founders who uh start off very early, like at the age of 18 and 20, and do their first startup at that.
• 2:51
  Prajit Nanu: I actually became a founder at the age of 32.
• 2:54
  Bam Azizi: Wow.
• 2:55
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, and I I keep telling younger founders uh that they don't have baggage, right?
• 3:00
  Prajit Nanu: I came with baggage because you know when you do it at 32, uh, you know, I had flown business, I used to work for a large corporate, you know, I've stayed in nice hotels, I've I've traveled for work, and from suddenly you go from all of that to a very scrunchy life when you become a tech founder, right?
• 3:17
  Prajit Nanu: Like so uh uh so I was spoiled, and then I had to kind of reset myself saying, Oh, now you know, this is my you know, I'm starting from scratch, right?
• 3:25
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh uh uh like 2014 I had a personal challenge of moving money, and I felt there has to be a better way.
• 3:32
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, to be honest, I was super naive.
• 3:34
  Prajit Nanu: I did not know payments, I did not know fintech, I did not know financial services, never worked in financial services before.
• 3:39
  Prajit Nanu: Uh and I think we've been very lucky uh all the way that everything kind of worked out for us, and you know, fast forward uh 11 years later, we are one of the largest financial technology companies across the globe.
• 3:52
  Bam Azizi: Wow, that's that's hell of a ride, man.
• 3:55
  Bam Azizi: Uh congrats.
• 3:56
  Bam Azizi: You you grew up in India, right?
• 3:58
  Bam Azizi: And then what did you like?
• 3:59
  Prajit Nanu: I grew up in Bombay in India, correct.
• 4:01
  Bam Azizi: And when did you move to US and how did that happen?
• 4:03
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, like you know, again, like you know, not a normal path.
• 4:06
  Prajit Nanu: Uh so 2015, uh, you know, grew up in India, moved to Singapore to build Niam, uh lived in Singapore for seven years, 2015 to 2022.
• 4:15
  Prajit Nanu: In fact, a lot of Niam success, I give it back to the Singapore ecosystem, Singapore community, and so on and so forth, because they were extremely helpful when I was building things.
• 4:24
  Prajit Nanu: Uh amazing regulator locally, um uh the ecosystem was phenomenal.
• 4:29
  Prajit Nanu: Then I think uh post-COVID, I think it was my realization that Singapore is a small ecosystem, FinTech is much smaller.
• 4:37
  Prajit Nanu: So I felt the fact by that time we had become big dogs in Singapore as well.
• 4:40
  Prajit Nanu: So I realized the fact that, and as founders, you need to constantly reinvent yourself.
• 4:45
  Prajit Nanu: Uh so I was like, okay, let me re-invent what what should I do to reinvent ourselves?
• 4:49
  Prajit Nanu: We had a big, large European business, so it would be more sensible for me to relocate to London, gives the full flexibility.
• 4:56
  Prajit Nanu: But I was like, hey, you know, I'm not really reinventing myself.
• 4:59
  Prajit Nanu: I knew London, I had stayed uh in London when I was much younger.
• 5:03
  Prajit Nanu: So I was like, okay, uh, what do you do?
• 5:05
  Prajit Nanu: So I went through the the tougher end, which is moved to San Francisco during the peak of COVID.
• 5:09
  Prajit Nanu: Uh had no network, no connections, moved with the three-year-old and a one-year-old, uh, which is always uh much more challenging.
• 5:17
  Prajit Nanu: So I actually moved much later in the Niam journey, and now I've been in the US for five years.
• 5:22
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, right, like a lot of people moved to the US to study, to start the startup.
• 5:27
  Prajit Nanu: I actually uh moved when we were a most established startup versus an early stage startup.
• 5:32
  Bam Azizi: Nice.
• 5:32
  Bam Azizi: And when did you when did you start Neum?
• 5:34
  Bam Azizi: What year?
• 5:35
  Bam Azizi: 2016.
• 5:36
  Prajit Nanu: 2015.
• 5:38
  Bam Azizi: And when where was Singapore?
• 5:40
  Prajit Nanu: Singapore, okay.
• 5:41
  Bam Azizi: So what what what was the ecosystem there in Singapore when you were starting neon?
• 5:45
  Bam Azizi: Was it like it become like more trendy to have to work as a startup founder versus like work for a corporate?
• 5:52
  Prajit Nanu: How do I it's a great question?
• 5:53
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, I think it's a great question.
• 5:55
  Prajit Nanu: I think uh Asia still is uh very uh, you know, the mentality is not to be a founder, is to go work for one of the larger banks.
• 6:02
  Prajit Nanu: Somebody else, you know, like failures are still not tolerated, etc.
• 6:06
  Prajit Nanu: So I think the ecosystem from that perspective is still very, very nascent or very, very early stage.
• 6:12
  Prajit Nanu: So it's not like an Israel or it's not like an India or like you know, people constantly kind of like, oh, I failed, oh, I want to go back.
• 6:18
  Prajit Nanu: In fact, uh early days in Singapore, I know so many people who I used to talk to, early stage founders.
• 6:24
  Prajit Nanu: The startup didn't work out, and a few weeks later they were uh doing a full-time job, right?
• 6:30
  Prajit Nanu: Like they didn't want to restart again.
• 6:32
  Prajit Nanu: In San Francisco, I see that oh, oh, this failed, I learned, this failed, I learned, oh, I've got success in the fifth start.
• 6:38
  Prajit Nanu: Like I think there are hardly few multiple founders uh you know uh in that ecosystem.
• 6:46
  Prajit Nanu: But the ecosystem is small, and everyone wants each one of you to succeed, right?
• 6:51
  Prajit Nanu: Like I remember in our early days, like we did not know what card issuing was uh anything about.
• 6:57
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, and I bumped into somebody who was doing card issuing, they basically taught me what card issuing is on a way from my office to a train station, and I was like, oh wow, why don't we issue cards?
• 7:07
  Prajit Nanu: And today we issue like 41 million cards a year, right?
• 7:10
  Prajit Nanu: Like so I I think it's uh a lot of the ecosystem being small, uh the uh regulatory ecosystem is amazing.
• 7:17
  Prajit Nanu: Singapore, uh MAS, the monetary authority of Singapore, actually established a concept of a chief fintech officer, uh, incredibly accessible to uh local fintechs in the market.
• 7:28
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, you know, they took advice, changed regulatory policies, etc.
• 7:32
  Prajit Nanu: So I think the whole 2015 to 2020, the ecosystem in Singapore was thriving significantly because a lot of people use Singapore as a base to build out operations in Indonesia, Vietnam, etc., which are larger populous markets to kind of try and test out.
• 7:47
  Prajit Nanu: Uh but uh amazing experiences again, uh being a very small ecosystem.
• 7:52
  Bam Azizi: So 2015 to 2020, you were like building the core of NeoM.
• 7:58
  Bam Azizi: The initial idea of NeoM was the same thing that uh you can't.
• 8:04
  Prajit Nanu: No, no, no, we no actually, yeah, it's a it's uh so we went through this whole journey where uh we originally I was an individual trying to send money.
• 8:13
  Prajit Nanu: So you originally I was uh like a consumer remittance focused, consumer slash SMB remittance focused uh startup.
• 8:20
  Prajit Nanu: So it's a uh interesting story where uh like and uh we grew rapidly.
• 8:25
  Prajit Nanu: Like our first hundred million of volume is faster than wise or evently, right?
• 8:29
  Prajit Nanu: Like we like uh some of their numbers are pretty public thanks to them being public complete.
• 8:33
  Prajit Nanu: Like we were growing uh like 50% month on month, right?
• 8:38
  Prajit Nanu: Like we found a great niche, we went behind the migrant segment in a couple of markets and did like one or two corridors, and boom, we were like scaling fast.
• 8:47
  Prajit Nanu: But the challenge of the consumer remittance business was the fact that there was no loyalty, right?
• 8:51
  Prajit Nanu: Like we constantly saw the fact that customers, uh uh the cohorts were uh they will use us for two months, then disappear for two months, then come back for two months.
• 9:01
  Prajit Nanu: And when I used to reach out to those customers, they were like, Hey, I just uh uh found a coupon code, my this was waved off, that was waved off.
• 9:09
  Prajit Nanu: Don't worry, I'm gonna come back to you uh next month when the coupon code.
• 9:12
  Prajit Nanu: So there was a lot of that.
• 9:14
  Prajit Nanu: And uh, you know, like and I I also realized as a founder, you need to stick to what your DNA is.
• 9:20
  Prajit Nanu: Like in in the 10, 12 years I worked, my DNA was largely enterprise sales and doing uh large corporate work versus consumer.
• 9:28
  Prajit Nanu: So my DNA I realized is more enterprise DNA versus a like a corporate DNA, uh like enterprise DNA versus like a consumer SMB DNA, right?
• 9:37
  Prajit Nanu: So that was like a pivotal moment.
• 9:39
  Prajit Nanu: And then 2016 end uh uh WorldPay, which is one of the largest payment processes in the world, came to us and said, Hey, can you help us process some payouts for a couple of our customers?
• 9:49
  Prajit Nanu: A large ride hailing and a large uh OTA.
• 9:53
  Prajit Nanu: And we were like, uh, yeah, why not?
• 9:56
  Prajit Nanu: Like we had no clue what we were doing.
• 9:57
  Prajit Nanu: I think WordPray also had uh an understanding that these guys will get it right, but I don't think they know what they're doing.
• 10:05
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, we kind of built the platform for them.
• 10:08
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, we spent like three months building the platform, went live.
• 10:12
  Prajit Nanu: The first month we did the same amount of volumes, what the consumer SMB business was doing.
• 10:16
  Prajit Nanu: So we're like, what are we doing?
• 10:18
  Prajit Nanu: Why are we focused on you know bringing each individual customer, convincing them to spare send thousand, two thousand dollars uh across?
• 10:26
  Prajit Nanu: Uh that was a big pivotal moment.
• 10:28
  Prajit Nanu: So 2017 we kind of rebranded to just focus on enterprise.
• 10:32
  Prajit Nanu: All right, like uh today, you know, some of the largest enterprise brands work with us to move money domestic and cross-border.
• 10:39
  Prajit Nanu: But uh the pivotal moment was 2016, where as a young startup, we just said yes, uh, yeah, let's try and do this versus saying no.
• 10:49
  Bam Azizi: Yeah.
• 10:49
  Bam Azizi: And then now you're you don't have any consumer business, you're like fully B2B, right?
• 10:55
  Prajit Nanu: We do have a small consumer business.
• 10:57
  Bam Azizi: Uh like majority of your business is in the B2B.
• 11:01
  Prajit Nanu: Correct.
• 11:01
  Prajit Nanu: So 95% of volume, revenue, etc., is enterprise.
• 11:04
  Prajit Nanu: We've still kept the consumer business 5%.
• 11:06
  Prajit Nanu: It's got an interesting product called Amaze in Singapore.
• 11:10
  Prajit Nanu: It's like a uh a card where which has no balance but it's linked to your existing uh credit card.
• 11:15
  Prajit Nanu: So when you travel overseas, uh you can get FX.
• 11:19
  Prajit Nanu: So we want people who go buy uh luxury goods overseas, and we are able to give them like a low FX versus the card FX.
• 11:26
  Prajit Nanu: Like when you step out of the US, US is an amazing element where uh the premium cards in US, you have zero FX when you travel overseas.
• 11:34
  Prajit Nanu: But suddenly you go to markets like uh Asia, uh banks charge like three to four percent on FX conversion.
• 11:41
  Prajit Nanu: So we actually offer a card which has zero balance.
• 11:43
  Prajit Nanu: So when you tap the card in an overseas pause, we give you the FX rate and it uh the transaction goes in local sync dollars back to your credit card.
• 11:53
  Prajit Nanu: Uh like I think there's a startup called Curve, uh similar to a curve product in Asia.
• 11:58
  Prajit Nanu: I think uh works extremely well, uh very profitable product for us.
• 12:03
  Prajit Nanu: Uh so we what we do is we use the consumer business to guinea pig new routes, corridors, new products which we launch and then launch it to enterprise so that we are testing it.
• 12:12
  Bam Azizi: When you learn on the consumer.
• 12:14
  Bam Azizi: Correct.
• 12:15
  Prajit Nanu: Correct, correct.
• 12:17
  Bam Azizi: And and tell me about the fundraising journey.
• 12:20
  Bam Azizi: Like as a first-name founder, how hard was it to get the first first check or the first million dollars into the door?
• 12:28
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, I think um fundraising was extremely complicated, right?
• 12:33
  Prajit Nanu: Like, I think multiple reasons.
• 12:34
  Prajit Nanu: One, I didn't come from a tech background, right?
• 12:37
  Prajit Nanu: I wish if I would have worked at a PayPal or you know, any kind of a bank or financial services company, raising money would have been much easier because they're like, oh, this guy understands context.
• 12:46
  Prajit Nanu: And initially, when I was fundraising, I was fundraising in India.
• 12:49
  Prajit Nanu: Uh India, again, like if you are from some of the top-tier colleges, they don't even want to know what you want to do.
• 12:56
  Prajit Nanu: Here is half a million dollars, right?
• 12:58
  Prajit Nanu: Like, they're like, yeah, here's a check.
• 13:00
  Prajit Nanu: So if you're like from some of the best colleges, you know, uh irrespective, means you may want to do the dumbest thing ever, but here is half a million, because their assumption, which I don't think is a wrong assumption, there you've gone uh selection process in some of those colleges are like brutal, right?
• 13:16
  Prajit Nanu: Like, so you're a top mind in the country.
• 13:20
  Prajit Nanu: So even if your existing idea will not work, you'll pivot to something which will work.
• 13:24
  Prajit Nanu: So I I I don't disagree with that concept, like, but uh I was a I didn't pass out of any top-tier calls.
• 13:30
  Prajit Nanu: Uh I did not know any VC.
• 13:32
  Prajit Nanu: I still have that uh you know in my uh mailbox, it's still there where I have the list of uh all the VCs I used to write to, right?
• 13:41
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh I used to just write, right?
• 13:43
  Prajit Nanu: Like to them saying, hey, I'm doing this.
• 13:45
  Prajit Nanu: Uh did a lot of those conversations.
• 13:47
  Prajit Nanu: Uh we we've had an interesting experience in an early stage where um we got a license, we absolutely needed capital to invest in it.
• 13:58
  Prajit Nanu: We had kind of done a handshake, agreed on terms with a VC, and the VC changed the term completely.
• 14:05
  Prajit Nanu: So, you know, like they said, oh, because they realize I'm desperate for the money.
• 14:08
  Prajit Nanu: So they said uh uh instead of um uh the uh like instead they basically said I want 40% of company for like $250,000.
• 14:17
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 14:18
  Prajit Nanu: And I felt that uh I hate doing deals with my back on the wall, and I was like, okay, I don't want to do the deal.
• 14:24
  Prajit Nanu: Uh it's a very funny thing.
• 14:26
  Prajit Nanu: I wrote to Tabit, who was the founder of VIES, saying, Hey, I've got a license in Australia, you don't have a license in Australia.
• 14:32
  Prajit Nanu: Do you want to buy my license uh and give me $30,000 uh uh for it?
• 14:37
  Prajit Nanu: So Tabit said, Oh, let us think about it.
• 14:39
  Prajit Nanu: And I think within 24 hours, my mind was changed.
• 14:42
  Prajit Nanu: I was like, we don't need to raise too much of cash.
• 14:44
  Prajit Nanu: I had I could put some more of my personal funds, I could basically bring in friends and family, and so I did a quick friends and family round, uh helped through another friend, uh boom, right?
• 14:56
  Prajit Nanu: Like I think uh uh we got money to survive for six months, right?
• 15:00
  Prajit Nanu: Like, and the one thing which I used to do is you know, some of the investors just keep emailing them, right?
• 15:07
  Prajit Nanu: Like, hey, this is what the progress, blah blah blah.
• 15:09
  Prajit Nanu: Rocket internet, rocket internet is kind of infamous in Asia because right, like they have had good and bad experiences.
• 15:15
  Prajit Nanu: And uh uh a gentleman had joined called Paolo had joined Rocket Internet to look at financial services for them.
• 15:21
  Prajit Nanu: He looked at one of my emails, reached out, uh, we met in Money Line, like boom, like they gave us half a million dollars, and we were like two guys in a PowerPoint at that point of time.
• 15:31
  Prajit Nanu: Uh nothing much at all.
• 15:32
  Bam Azizi: Was it 2016?
• 15:35
  Prajit Nanu: This is uh 2014.
• 15:36
  Bam Azizi: 14 before even the pivot happens, okay.
• 15:40
  Prajit Nanu: Correct, before.
• 15:41
  Prajit Nanu: So this was like uh so we got half a million dollars.
• 15:43
  Prajit Nanu: Uh I think the money came in in like uh 2016 uh of May.
• 15:48
  Prajit Nanu: So now finally it felt real, right?
• 15:51
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh finally felt real, things are starting to move in the right direction.
• 15:56
  Prajit Nanu: 2015, not 16, 2015.
• 15:58
  Prajit Nanu: And then I think um we were again like uh early stage fundraising was always like we used to always raise money just before we we were about to die, right?
• 16:08
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh it's hilarious, right?
• 16:11
  Prajit Nanu: Like today when I think about we've raised like 400 million dollars of venture.
• 16:14
  Bam Azizi: You have to raise when you have the money.
• 16:15
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, you know, sometimes when you know investors reach out now and say, hey Prajeet, are you raising?
• 16:22
  Prajit Nanu: Like we would love to talk, and I was like, hey, not raising, not talking.
• 16:24
  Prajit Nanu: I think about 11 years ago, all right?
• 16:27
  Prajit Nanu: Like you know, any Tom Dick and Harry sent an email, are you raising?
• 16:30
  Prajit Nanu: I'm like, Yes.
• 16:31
  Prajit Nanu: Uh what do you what information do you need?
• 16:34
  Prajit Nanu: So it's it's a it's a good learning journey.
• 16:36
  Prajit Nanu: So series A was again uh like uh the uh I used to live in India at that time because the costs were low, I wanted to keep costs low.
• 16:44
  Prajit Nanu: And we had exhausted like 95 VCs to lead a series A.
• 16:50
  Prajit Nanu: 95, uh right, like I still have the list.
• 16:53
  Prajit Nanu: It's uh it's all humbling, it's all amazing, right?
• 16:55
  Prajit Nanu: Like, because you know I sometimes go back whenever I feel down, and like founders' day is always like like this, right?
• 17:00
  Prajit Nanu: Like it's a as roller coaster as it can be, right?
• 17:03
  Bam Azizi: Like, so whenever 96, that's it, yes.
• 17:07
  Prajit Nanu: So it was, yeah, like exactly, right?
• 17:08
  Prajit Nanu: Like so uh there were two investors, both were based in Singapore, and one of them was candid that hey, unless you move to Singapore, I can never give you the check.
• 17:18
  Prajit Nanu: So then it was like uh should I, should I not?
• 17:21
  Prajit Nanu: Spoke to my wife.
• 17:22
  Prajit Nanu: My wife was like, uh, you know, we had a lot of friends in Singapore.
• 17:25
  Prajit Nanu: So we said, okay, let's try it out.
• 17:27
  Prajit Nanu: Like, because those days we had only 250k in the bank, which meant six months runway.
• 17:32
  Prajit Nanu: So I was telling my wife, let me move alone.
• 17:34
  Prajit Nanu: She said, No, don't worry, you know, uh, let us do it together.
• 17:37
  Prajit Nanu: And she had a job which kind of transferred her to Singapore as well.
• 17:41
  Prajit Nanu: So she was running the house.
• 17:43
  Prajit Nanu: I was like, okay, so there's some money to pay the bills.
• 17:45
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, but having said that, it was um uh like series A happened.
• 17:50
  Prajit Nanu: Uh one of the two investors uh was Vertex, which is a venture capital of Tomasec, uh, which is a Singapore government state uh fund.
• 17:59
  Prajit Nanu: And they actually led us Series A.
• 18:01
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, right, like uh and they led us Series A, Fullerton Financial Holding, which is another sister uh business from Tomasek, Dem and uh Rocket Internet kind of uh came in pro rata.
• 18:12
  Bam Azizi: So what was the series A?
• 18:14
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh four million, like four million dollars.
• 18:18
  Prajit Nanu: Like post of listen, post of Levin, right?
• 18:22
  Prajit Nanu: Like, look at that, right?
• 18:23
  Prajit Nanu: Like, so I joke with Vertex that I've kind of returned the fund for them, like you know, uh like because I was a uh first-time absolutely knife founder.
• 18:32
  Prajit Nanu: So I had no clue what I was doing, so I was like, okay, you know, here is a company who's been starving of money, but growing.
• 18:39
  Prajit Nanu: So why not take the money and then kind of build out of it?
• 18:42
  Prajit Nanu: So I think series A and uh was pretty tough.
• 18:45
  Prajit Nanu: Then series B onwards, we raised 15, series C we raised like 30, 40, and what was the last round that you closed?
• 18:52
  Bam Azizi: 2021?
• 18:53
  Bam Azizi: Was it?
• 18:54
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, no, no, we we raised money in 24.
• 18:56
  Prajit Nanu: Uh BI, which is Brunei Investment Authority, which is like uh uh state fund of Brunei, actually invested.
• 19:02
  Prajit Nanu: Uh we raised that 2 billion during the funding craziness, then we needed some capital to short up a balance sheet.
• 19:08
  Prajit Nanu: So we raised about in 2024.
• 19:10
  Prajit Nanu: Business like our revenue has grown like 100% since then.
• 19:13
  Prajit Nanu: Uh no hurry to raise significant capital in the bank right now.
• 19:17
  Bam Azizi: Yeah, now you're the bus.
• 19:18
  Bam Azizi: Your back is not against the wall.
• 19:20
  Bam Azizi: You every VC wants to talk to you.
• 19:22
  Bam Azizi: Now you're in US.
• 19:24
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, like and it's also uh you need to bring investors with the right mindset.
• 19:28
  Prajit Nanu: Some of my friends, I think some of the mistakes they do in investors.
• 19:31
  Prajit Nanu: I think um taking money from a VC, uh, I have like a simple rule don't take a lot of money from a small VC fund because then they move all their focus to you because their success and failure is linked to you.
• 19:45
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 19:46
  Prajit Nanu: So they spend a lot of time trying to counsel.
• 19:48
  Prajit Nanu: I don't think you can counsel founders.
• 19:50
  Prajit Nanu: I think the best investors on my cap table are ones who trust me and let me do what I want to do.
• 19:57
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 19:58
  Prajit Nanu: Uh there are guardrails, right?
• 20:00
  Prajit Nanu: But I have to live and work within the guardrails, but there is an absolute amount of trust instead of uh daily questions of why are you doing this, what you're doing this, and blah blah blah.
• 20:11
  Bam Azizi: I agree.
• 20:11
  Bam Azizi: So sometimes founders um optimize the deal around valuation, um, and then they get into a relationship that is not definitely the most healthiest one.
• 20:23
  Bam Azizi: And that's that's when the divergence happens and the problem starts to pop up.
• 20:28
  Bam Azizi: So correct.
• 20:29
  Prajit Nanu: And in fact, it's also the type of the company you're trying to build.
• 20:32
  Prajit Nanu: Like I think uh what I tell founders is that if you are in that mindset that, hey, this is not going to sell, uh, this is not gonna scale, then if you keep raising money, if you go north of a billion dollars, the number of people who can buy your company can reduce from say hundreds to maybe ten, uh, maybe maybe f less than five who can execute it.
• 20:54
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 20:54
  Prajit Nanu: So the more money you raise, the more value you create, the lesser number of buyers you'll ever have.
• 21:01
  Prajit Nanu: So I actually tell founders that uh evaluate your options, right?
• 21:04
  Prajit Nanu: Like, you know, sometimes, by the way, sometimes selling your business is not a bad option.
• 21:09
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 21:09
  Prajit Nanu: Like, but there are there are in each space, I would say there are less than 10 buyers once you cross the north of a billion.
• 21:17
  Bam Azizi: Yep, 100%.
• 21:18
  Bam Azizi: So speaking of acquisition, in last 10 years, have you had acquisition offers to just buy new and why you said no?
• 21:28
  Prajit Nanu: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 21:28
  Prajit Nanu: So we've got multiple acquisition offers across the years.
• 21:31
  Prajit Nanu: I think the first few years was more frequent.
• 21:33
  Prajit Nanu: Now, as I said, as we become bigger, it is uh you know, like I I typically don't like to engage because you know I think uh uh my primary reason of not wanting to engage, right?
• 21:46
  Prajit Nanu: Like anyone who'll buy us, uh if say a large brand buys us, right, like who's a large financial services company, etc., either they'll suffocate us because they will not let us kind of grow, thrive, oh you can't do this, you can't do this.
• 21:59
  Prajit Nanu: Uh There is uh you know, like uh there's not much of democracy.
• 22:03
  Prajit Nanu: I can actually jump in and say, No, we are going to do this, right?
• 22:06
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh disagree, but commit uh option.
• 22:09
  Prajit Nanu: But once you join a bigger firm, then there are like 17 subcommittees and 13 subcommittees to do stuff, right?
• 22:17
  Prajit Nanu: Like to do new stuff, right?
• 22:18
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh uh you know, but we see we we've been on the other side where we are massive acquisitors.
• 22:26
  Prajit Nanu: In fact, we've gone done crazy things like back in 2023.
• 22:30
  Prajit Nanu: We tried to buy a publicly listed firm, right?
• 22:33
  Prajit Nanu: It didn't work out, but uh great phenomenal learning for me, right?
• 22:37
  Prajit Nanu: Like so now when you think about this, we keep doing all these crazy aspects as well.
• 22:43
  Prajit Nanu: So I and I believe that only way I can be excited to sell Niam is if I meet somebody whose vision is like 10x of mine and saying one plus one is equal to 20, then it makes sense.
• 22:55
  Prajit Nanu: Otherwise, right, like we are on a great path of doing amazing things ourselves.
• 22:59
  Prajit Nanu: Why do we need somebody else?
• 23:01
  Bam Azizi: We have less reasons to sell and more reason to build, basically.
• 23:04
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, and build and buy, right?
• 23:06
  Prajit Nanu: Like I think fintech is going to see a massive consolidation, right?
• 23:08
  Prajit Nanu: Like I think uh you know there are too many uh uh you know, too many non-founder run businesses as well.
• 23:14
  Prajit Nanu: When you're a non-founder run business, investors are always like, oh, what do we do if there is no growth, etc.?
• 23:20
  Prajit Nanu: And you know, I can tell you, like, people don't realize we we grew from like the 50 to 100 million growth happened very quickly in Niam, like I think 12 to 18 months.
• 23:31
  Prajit Nanu: The 100 to 200 million has taken like a like one two, two and a half years for us.
• 23:37
  Prajit Nanu: It's not easy, right?
• 23:38
  Prajit Nanu: Like, and you know, I keep joking with uh some of our like to grow at say, you know, everyone expects the rule of 40 and stuff like that.
• 23:47
  Prajit Nanu: So let's let's assume like to grow at 30%, right?
• 23:50
  Prajit Nanu: That's $60 million of revenue at our scale right now.
• 23:55
  Prajit Nanu: How many fintechs in the US make $60 million of revenue?
• 24:00
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 24:01
  Prajit Nanu: Like, so I have to create the same amount of revenue every year to keep growing, right?
• 24:06
  Prajit Nanu: Like, so yes, some SaaS businesses, etc., they're phenomenal in our scale, and you know this as well as I do, because we both target the enterprise segment.
• 24:15
  Prajit Nanu: Uh, you know, these are large businesses, take six months uh to onboard, then spend another six to twelve months to integrate, and then you start seeing.
• 24:26
  Prajit Nanu: And these are like behemoths, right?
• 24:27
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh I remember one of our large enterprises uh got delayed by like six months because they got back with a legal document.
• 24:36
  Prajit Nanu: We took two weeks to respond.
• 24:37
  Prajit Nanu: They said, Oh, now our legal team is busy, you guys took too long.
• 24:44
  Bam Azizi: Uh yeah.
• 24:45
  Prajit Nanu: So it's not easy, it's not easy.
• 24:46
  Prajit Nanu: Like, I think uh so I have a lot of respect for founders, um, and especially in the enterprise business.
• 24:52
  Prajit Nanu: On the consumer SMB side, super easy.
• 24:54
  Prajit Nanu: Do marketing, uh, offer rebates, right?
• 24:58
  Prajit Nanu: Like that's where they so if you're like SMB focused, uh mid-market focused, very easy to grow very rapidly, right?
• 25:05
  Prajit Nanu: Uh cost basic thing.
• 25:08
  Bam Azizi: Yeah, you can't spend a ton of money.
• 25:10
  Prajit Nanu: It's all product-led growth, right?
• 25:12
  Prajit Nanu: Because you know you create an amazing product which is sticky and usable.
• 25:14
  Prajit Nanu: But for enterprises, enterprise know what they want.
• 25:17
  Prajit Nanu: All right, like they'll be like, I want this, I want that, I want this 18th API of yours, I don't want your other 17.
• 25:23
  Prajit Nanu: Like they'll exactly know what they want.
• 25:26
  Bam Azizi: Yep.
• 25:26
  Bam Azizi: And so you're relatively a young founder, you're in the business of money movement globally.
• 25:34
  Bam Azizi: You're building Rails, and that's kind of what crypto and a stable coin trying to disrupt.
• 25:41
  Bam Azizi: How did you how did you get into that realm?
• 25:44
  Bam Azizi: And then like what was your first try and why it didn't work?
• 25:47
  Prajit Nanu: Sure.
• 25:47
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, like I think uh you know, I would I always tell people that we were very early in crypto, like we built a crypto team in end of 2020, 2021, early 2021, because we could see that.
• 25:58
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, like the proper inflection timing, you know, like uh uh and the biggest mistake we did is that we tried to run it as a standalone business unit.
• 26:09
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 26:11
  Prajit Nanu: What and I think that if I you know when now we are buying multiple crypto businesses as we go through this rollout of our vision, that was an absolute mistake of building it.
• 26:22
  Prajit Nanu: So it was a phenomenal team, phenomenal founderslash GM who kind of ran it.
• 26:27
  Prajit Nanu: Uh the challenge was they sat outside of NIAM.
• 26:30
  Prajit Nanu: So everybody in Niam looked at them and said, Oh my god, resourcing.
• 26:35
  Prajit Nanu: They're they're going to come to us for legal, they're going to come to us for contracts, everything.
• 26:39
  Prajit Nanu: And they built product outside of NIEM, which is they were not using our APIs.
• 26:43
  Prajit Nanu: They said, you know, screw you guys, I've built everything of my own and so on and so forth.
• 26:47
  Prajit Nanu: So it never got embedded within deeply within our customer set.
• 26:51
  Prajit Nanu: So we couldn't take it to our existing customers.
• 26:54
  Prajit Nanu: So we have a simple thumb rule in Niam that always buy things which our existing customers need versus new customers, right?
• 27:02
  Prajit Nanu: Like so, you know, so the so that it didn't really work.
• 27:05
  Prajit Nanu: And then crypto went through this whole crisis with the whole FTX fallout and so on and so forth.
• 27:10
  Prajit Nanu: By the way, we used to do FTX wallet withdrawal at a point of time.
• 27:13
  Prajit Nanu: They were one of our fastest uh customers to grow, and um we are one of the very few companies in the world where we actually gave money back to the liquidators because we had like 10-15 million dollars their money, they were not asking it back, we were not giving it back.
• 27:28
  Prajit Nanu: Uh then one day we got a letter from the liquidator saying, Hey, we believe you got so much of money.
• 27:33
  Prajit Nanu: Like they did the liquidators had no clue how much money we had as well.
• 27:36
  Prajit Nanu: They're like, Hey, we believe there is some money.
• 27:39
  Bam Azizi: That's crazy.
• 27:40
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, like uh, you know, the question we the I still remember getting the letter, and I was laughing with my GC at that time.
• 27:47
  Prajit Nanu: They were like, We believe you guys have some money of ours.
• 27:50
  Prajit Nanu: We don't know how much is it, what is it, uh, but we would like you to uh we're like we're like we are a very honest company, we're a very ethical company, so we like whatever.
• 27:59
  Prajit Nanu: It'll look like I would say between 15 to 15 million dollars, 12 to 15 million dollars.
• 28:04
  Prajit Nanu: Wow.
• 28:05
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 28:05
  Prajit Nanu: Like so we uh so we went through that journey, and then what we also saw with the FTX collapse is that banks became very rigid.
• 28:12
  Prajit Nanu: They basically, so one of our large banks who we don't work with today, um came to us and said, Hey, you know, if you apply for a crypto license, we will shut you down.
• 28:23
  Prajit Nanu: Wow.
• 28:25
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 28:26
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh so that was a very interesting feedback.
• 28:28
  Prajit Nanu: So we were like, okay, why jeopardize this business?
• 28:31
  Prajit Nanu: So now our view is very different.
• 28:33
  Prajit Nanu: Uh uh my view was changed, right?
• 28:37
  Bam Azizi: So I remember um we got like a letter from our bank that you will like freeze all of your assets because you have the word digital asset on your website.
• 28:46
  Bam Azizi: So we had to change our website or shut down our bank account.
• 28:50
  Bam Azizi: So we decided to move to another bank.
• 28:52
  Bam Azizi: Just even though you're not touching crypto, you're just pure infrastructure, just you're not like a token company, right?
• 28:59
  Bam Azizi: So it's crazy.
• 29:00
  Bam Azizi: Now, like all of those banks, now they're chasing us like because of the Genius Act and the Clarity Act.
• 29:05
  Bam Azizi: They have car rails, like it's a better environment to build in crypto.
• 29:09
  Prajit Nanu: Okay, correct.
• 29:10
  Prajit Nanu: It's a better environment.
• 29:11
  Prajit Nanu: Like, you know, and I I love the stablecoin thesis.
• 29:14
  Prajit Nanu: I I you know the challenge I've also had with crypto bros, as I call them, is that uh crypto bros are amazing at like shrilling something, right?
• 29:22
  Prajit Nanu: Like they're like, you know, if you look at uh history, which I've mentioned, is like 2017 they said IPOs will be dead, ICO is the new thing, then they you know NFTs became the biggest thing, right?
• 29:32
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh, you know, the football world cup is happening now.
• 29:35
  Prajit Nanu: I remember the 22 football world cup, they were like trying to give out NFTs and this and that, and like now nobody it it's happening on the background, but nobody now talks about like Coke was giving NFT creating NFT, Nike was creating NFT, everybody was creating collectibles.
• 29:50
  Prajit Nanu: Now that industry seems to be like no one talks about it, right?
• 29:53
  Prajit Nanu: Uh then they move to uh DAO, right?
• 29:57
  Prajit Nanu: Like let's go buy golf courses.
• 29:59
  Prajit Nanu: Uh then they uh move to stable coins, right?
• 30:02
  Prajit Nanu: Like which began.
• 30:03
  Prajit Nanu: So one of my biggest worries uh on the crypto side is, and yes, it's a very nascent industry, it's like you know, in the in like 15 years old, like 14 years old.
• 30:13
  Prajit Nanu: So even if you think in that fashion, uh it is a very, very young industry.
• 30:18
  Prajit Nanu: But the fact that they keep jumping from one place to the other, you know, trying to figure out a new solution is is what worries me.
• 30:26
  Prajit Nanu: But I think with stablecoin we have a real practical real life use case, which is impacting real-life use cases, right?
• 30:33
  Prajit Nanu: Like so that's where we felt the fact that uh uh we are uh going to basically manage in that aspect.
• 30:42
  Bam Azizi: But you said you you learned from your mistakes that crypto as a separate thing won't work, but you want to emb stable coin into your existing Rails, existing products to make them better, cheaper, more efficient.
• 30:54
  Bam Azizi: Is that correct?
• 30:56
  Prajit Nanu: That's absolutely correct.
• 30:57
  Prajit Nanu: So I think when we were uh so we you know we acquired Cypher, Cypher was a uh a consumer uh neo bank for getting people on-chain.
• 31:06
  Prajit Nanu: And like I I strongly believe, right?
• 31:08
  Prajit Nanu: Like the fact that a lot of people will access on-chain uh financial services before they do traditional banks, you know, the next billion is what I believe.
• 31:16
  Prajit Nanu: Now, you know, I got I got this question saying, uh, why would you want to buy a consumer-linked company versus buying the easiest thing for us to do is buy a B2B orchestration layer or something like that?
• 31:28
  Prajit Nanu: But a lot of our customers today have large distribution access, and they're like, hey, what do I do to bring more customers of mine on chain?
• 31:36
  Prajit Nanu: So that's why we bought Cypher, which is a consumer company, then take all their learnings, convert all their learnings into an API, and then basically relaunch the product where anyone can launch a cipher with the full non-custodial wallet, cards, etc., using Neum infrastructure as an out-of-box solution.
• 31:55
  Bam Azizi: Um so are you competing with company like Airwallx?
• 32:01
  Prajit Nanu: Uh I think some parts are like uh uh you know, phenomenal company in Jackson have a great job in building like a really large enterprise.
• 32:09
  Prajit Nanu: And like uh their core is SMBs, right?
• 32:12
  Prajit Nanu: It's like you know, I think they're uh for somebody like an Airwallx, a bigger competitor will be like a wise business, uh, you know, like that like wise business soak in in Europe and so on.
• 32:23
  Bam Azizi: You're more on the enterprise end.
• 32:25
  Prajit Nanu: We're more on the enterprise side.
• 32:26
  Bam Azizi: So there is a small part of the money movement, right?
• 32:29
  Bam Azizi: So and and Jack had a very famous quote that you can't you can be cheaper than free and you can be faster than instant.
• 32:38
  Bam Azizi: Uh when people ask him like why you're not using stablecoin, if you're in a global money movement, and he like that, and now he's he's getting into stablecoin and he tweeted about it.
• 32:49
  Bam Azizi: Um so what what do you think of like do you think that there is a trend that all these companies that they were in traditional money movement business coming to work crypto?
• 32:59
  Bam Azizi: So you acquire Cypher, Jack is launching his own crypto, wise is using a stablecoin to move money.
• 33:05
  Bam Azizi: Like what's what's happening all of a sudden?
• 33:07
  Prajit Nanu: I think it's you know, uh all of us are in the board that if the technology shift happens significantly, we don't want to be left behind, right?
• 33:16
  Prajit Nanu: So we are all testing, piloting things.
• 33:18
  Prajit Nanu: And uh by the way, he's right to some extent, right?
• 33:20
  Prajit Nanu: Because if you add uh on-ramp, off-ramp costs, this whole stablecoin sandwich can make it really expensive, right?
• 33:26
  Prajit Nanu: Like I can, you know, you give me some US dollars in the US right now, I can send that money faster into quite a few markets without using any stablecoins, right?
• 33:36
  Prajit Nanu: Like because uh we've got these uh massive liquidity pools which we've created over a decade, uh, which I can price in a lot of emerging markets.
• 33:44
  Prajit Nanu: I can quote FX.
• 33:45
  Prajit Nanu: I don't need a bank because we have in and out and so on and so forth, right?
• 33:48
  Prajit Nanu: Like so uh I think there is an applicable, and again, like I as I said, right, everybody becomes very euphoric.
• 33:55
  Prajit Nanu: And that's my worry about digital assets, right?
• 33:57
  Prajit Nanu: Like, oh, this is gonna like remittance is gonna go to zero, this is gonna go to zero, it's not gonna go to zero, right?
• 34:03
  Prajit Nanu: Like there's a cost of compliance, there's a lot of it's a $900 billion industry, uh, right, which must be what at least uh forty to fifty billion dollars of revenue in consumer remittance.
• 34:15
  Prajit Nanu: How do you expect that to go to zero, right?
• 34:17
  Prajit Nanu: Uh uh, you know, so that I don't think it's gonna go to zero.
• 34:20
  Prajit Nanu: So there's a lot of streamlining.
• 34:22
  Prajit Nanu: Like I I see the biggest value of stablecoin is in treasury, right?
• 34:27
  Prajit Nanu: Like not in payments.
• 34:28
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh, you know, the other day I was in a uh I was in a panel and I was like, there is like 30 trillion dollars uh stuck in Nashro Oshrow accounts of banks.
• 34:38
  Prajit Nanu: If that money you can't earn yield on that money if you earn yield, it's like 3%.
• 34:43
  Prajit Nanu: That's a trillion dollars back into the economy, back into the hands of people.
• 34:46
  Prajit Nanu: So right, like so there is a lot of settlement.
• 34:49
  Prajit Nanu: I see stablecoin as a massive value on settlements, all right?
• 34:53
  Prajit Nanu: Like, can I settle to you instantly?
• 34:56
  Prajit Nanu: Right?
• 34:56
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh versus a payment mechanism, right?
• 35:01
  Prajit Nanu: Like, because today let's look at the uh you know, people so I I see a bigger B2B use case than a C2C use case.
• 35:08
  Prajit Nanu: Like, let me kind of put because let's look at this example, right?
• 35:11
  Prajit Nanu: Like you send money from US to India using stables, right?
• 35:15
  Prajit Nanu: You give me US dollars, I convert that into USDC, I send the USDC via an exchange to India.
• 35:22
  Prajit Nanu: Then I can't buy bread with USDC in India, so I have to off-ramp it.
• 35:27
  Prajit Nanu: So I have to take USDC again in an exchange, and of course, some of these places are parallel, secondary markets, etc., where you can sometimes get better than mid-market effects, right?
• 35:37
  Prajit Nanu: But these are all short-term, right?
• 35:39
  Prajit Nanu: Like these are not long-term, right?
• 35:40
  Prajit Nanu: Uh so you exchange it and you off-ramp it to your bank account in India, then you can buy bread with it.
• 35:46
  Prajit Nanu: But if you think about on-ramp costs, off-ramp costs, etc., like uh like large infrastructure players like Niam, Wise, Airwall X, etc., we will be able to do it not only instantly, far lower costs.
• 36:00
  Prajit Nanu: So and again, like uh Cube, the founder Cypher uh is always reminds me that it's only a year ago when Genius Act came in place and which made stablecoin real.
• 36:11
  Prajit Nanu: So we are in very, very, very early stages of building.
• 36:15
  Bam Azizi: Yeah.
• 36:16
  Bam Azizi: So do you think in the next chapter of NeoM stablecoin is playing an important role to get you more efficient, and especially in places that you are not as efficient as like US, India, or other craters?
• 36:30
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:30
  Prajit Nanu: So I think uh like the biggest value I see is treasury, right?
• 36:34
  Prajit Nanu: Like today, if you're a large corporate with balances in like 60, 70 different markets, uh today you don't really have a US dollar view of how much money do you own.
• 36:44
  Prajit Nanu: You have some Nigerian Naira, you have some Indian rupee, you have some Filipino peso, and then you earn random yields in these markets.
• 36:51
  Prajit Nanu: So for a treasurer, imagine if I can see my whole balance is all across the globe in a US dollar, and I'm earning yield in some emerging markets on overnight balances in US dollars, uh, or yield incentive rewards, whatever you want to call it.
• 37:05
  Prajit Nanu: I think that's the big differentiator you will have, right?
• 37:08
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh uh I don't see as I said, like I don't see it as a payment tool, I see it as a settlement tool, right?
• 37:14
  Prajit Nanu: Like scheme settling, new settling to the merchant, and so on and so forth.
• 37:19
  Bam Azizi: And for Neum to be to be where Stripe is today, like hundred billion dollar plus valuation, what should happen?
• 37:28
  Bam Azizi: What should go right in the next five years?
• 37:30
  Prajit Nanu: I think it's all execution for us.
• 37:31
  Prajit Nanu: We have this very heavily licensed uh across the globe.
• 37:35
  Prajit Nanu: Now we are adding uh you know uh digital asset licenses, DPT in Singapore, Mika in Europe, and so on and so forth.
• 37:41
  Prajit Nanu: So I think for us, um you know, I keep telling our team that our success is uh defined on a way that we've got all the ducks in the row.
• 37:51
  Prajit Nanu: We have to take like a nice deep breath, uh, take an aim, shoot.
• 37:55
  Prajit Nanu: Then take a deep breath, take aim, shoot, right?
• 37:58
  Prajit Nanu: Like it's all execution, right?
• 38:00
  Prajit Nanu: So uh in fact, uh, you know, where I I'm actively pitching against uh uh you know, like for a customer.
• 38:06
  Prajit Nanu: If it's a large enterprise, we're doing a pitch, I actually go for the pitch, etc.
• 38:10
  Prajit Nanu: And like my view there is every company is similar to Niam, right?
• 38:15
  Prajit Nanu: Like the pitch decks are all the same, right?
• 38:17
  Prajit Nanu: Like, oh, we can do this, we can do that.
• 38:18
  Prajit Nanu: Like if you've seen like uh everyone says the same narrative.
• 38:21
  Prajit Nanu: I can reach 190 markets, I'm instant, I'm real time, I'm blah, I'm blue.
• 38:25
  Prajit Nanu: And like what difference we offer is we are very clear with the customer saying that execution is the key, right?
• 38:34
  Prajit Nanu: Payments is not cross-border payments, especially is not defined by the 99% of payment which goes smoothly, it's that 1% which will go all over the place.
• 38:43
  Prajit Nanu: And that happens, right?
• 38:45
  Prajit Nanu: Like if somebody says, Oh, I do 100% payments, I have 100% STP or 99.79 STP, they are bullshitting themselves.
• 38:53
  Prajit Nanu: So I think the reality in the world of payments is that after a certain scale, it's all about execution, right?
• 38:59
  Prajit Nanu: There is there's no bells and whistles or a deep moat you can create.
• 39:03
  Prajit Nanu: Any moat I create will be replicated by anybody over the next two to three years.
• 39:07
  Prajit Nanu: All right.
• 39:07
  Prajit Nanu: But the execution is the biggest moat in payments.
• 39:11
  Bam Azizi: Yeah.
• 39:12
  Bam Azizi: If if you have one advice for a younger version of yourself when you were starting in a business, what would that be?
• 39:20
  Prajit Nanu: I think hire the right talent.
• 39:22
  Prajit Nanu: I think if you if you look at the folks like Stripe and these guys have done an exceptionally great job because they found people super high agency, uh, gave them tasks and just got them to out-execute everybody else in the market, right?
• 39:34
  Prajit Nanu: Like I think uh when I look at myself, like uh uh, you know, because in our early stages we didn't raise a lot of money because we couldn't afford the best talent.
• 39:43
  Prajit Nanu: But now when I think of it, I should have instead of hiring for experience, I should have hired for high agency.
• 39:50
  Prajit Nanu: Makes sense.
• 39:52
  Bam Azizi: That that I can I can agree with.
• 39:54
  Bam Azizi: Um also because starting a business is hard.
• 39:59
  Bam Azizi: Starting business outside of US in India and Singapore is even extremely harder.
• 40:05
  Bam Azizi: Uh so build like you had to basically prove everybody else that you're wrong, like 95 investors that you're wrong in M right by just doing flawless execution.
• 40:17
  Bam Azizi: And then the fun the fundraising will happen um kind of organically after you have you have like numbers to show for, right?
• 40:24
  Bam Azizi: So you have the you have the proof of work.
• 40:27
  Bam Azizi: Um and um not like the the message for a lot of um founders is you don't need to be born in Silicon Valley in Atherton and have like your dads extending intro and then be able to raise money, right?
• 40:42
  Bam Azizi: So anywhere that you are, you like Neon, like I remember when when I was like we were a smaller company, I messaged you on LinkedIn.
• 40:50
  Bam Azizi: I was like following you.
• 40:52
  Bam Azizi: It was very, very inspiring to see how did you grow from like zero to like two billion dollar company.
• 40:58
  Bam Azizi: Um now the question that that what what would be your advice for founders outside of US?
• 41:04
  Bam Azizi: How like do they need to move to Silicon Valley to start?
• 41:07
  Bam Azizi: Or like would you would you do that if you go back in time?
• 41:11
  Bam Azizi: Would you come to US?
• 41:12
  Prajit Nanu: I think uh San Francisco is the place to build, right?
• 41:15
  Prajit Nanu: Like, you know, like uh, you know, people when they talk about like US is a very tax heavy market, right?
• 41:20
  Prajit Nanu: Like and like uh of course, like but when people say, oh, move from a tax perspective, etc.
• 41:25
  Prajit Nanu: I'll be like, hey, I lived in Singapore.
• 41:26
  Prajit Nanu: If I have to move back, I'll go back to Singapore.
• 41:28
  Prajit Nanu: Uh you know, it's it's home for me, like it's my first home.
• 41:32
  Prajit Nanu: But I think the amazing thing about San Francisco is just the um effects of the local ecosystem is so amazing, right?
• 41:42
  Prajit Nanu: Like the people here are so phenomenal, they've done so amazing things.
• 41:46
  Prajit Nanu: Uh the network effects are phenomenal of San Francisco, right?
• 41:50
  Prajit Nanu: Like it's just the fact that you're here and uh the amazing thing I find is that uh tomorrow I want to meet someone, right?
• 41:58
  Prajit Nanu: Like let's take an example, right?
• 42:00
  Prajit Nanu: Tomorrow I want to meet someone uh and uh I can actually meet that person uh in the next few weeks or maybe a month, and the introductor will not be somebody who will come from the work or will come from it could be somebody who plays golf with that person or his kid goes to the other per with the other kid's school or something like that.
• 42:20
  Prajit Nanu: So the network effects of being in San Francisco is phenomenal, right?
• 42:24
  Prajit Nanu: Uh and I think the investor community here also is uh is is very future focused.
• 42:31
  Prajit Nanu: They're like, okay, you know, forget about what you have.
• 42:34
  Prajit Nanu: Tell me what you're building, tell me, tell me your excitement, tell me, tell me why do you think this is going to become big, tell me why.
• 42:40
  Prajit Nanu: Like it's like because people have seen you know garage companies go become trillion dollar businesses.
• 42:45
  Prajit Nanu: So they have seen that experience and exposure, which not many uh companies in Asia would have seen, right?
• 42:51
  Bam Azizi: Like from there is no shame in failure, in that such.
• 42:54
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:54
  Prajit Nanu: There's no, like I think like you know, I sometimes I feel that I should have moved when I was much younger, right?
• 42:58
  Prajit Nanu: Like it's like uh it's like you know, I met so many, I met a founder a few months ago where it was his fifth startup, he made some money, and now he's on his sixth startup and he's making a lot of money.
• 43:10
  Prajit Nanu: So he's like, I failed five times, and he he wears it uh uh like he wears it.
• 43:15
  Prajit Nanu: Like this is my first startup.
• 43:16
  Prajit Nanu: I hope I have energy to do one more.
• 43:18
  Prajit Nanu: But I'm just uh amazed that like he wears it as a badge of honor, right?
• 43:24
  Prajit Nanu: Like, and when I go back to Singapore, I keep telling uh founders whose first startup did work, saying that spend some time here.
• 43:31
  Prajit Nanu: You see the fact that you know, if given a choice, like you know, I wear the Niam logo, he would wear the five logos of his company and like say, you know what, all of these pairs, but this is working, and that that excitement, and nobody cares, right?
• 43:42
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh nobody really cares.
• 43:44
  Prajit Nanu: So I I just think that this ecosystem is what uh makes San Francisco the best place to build.
• 43:51
  Bam Azizi: Love it.
• 43:52
  Bam Azizi: Um, Rajat, it was an amazing episode.
• 43:55
  Bam Azizi: I really, really enjoyed our conversation.
• 43:57
  Bam Azizi: Can't wait it to be aired.
• 43:58
  Bam Azizi: Uh my last question, which became a tradition, what's your favorite restaurant in Singapore and in San Francisco?
• 44:07
  Prajit Nanu: Oh, um, Singapore, like uh I can't uh put one, depending upon what you want to eat.
• 44:11
  Prajit Nanu: Uh I can give you like 500 different uh restaurants with vegetarian restaurant in Singapore.
• 44:16
  Prajit Nanu: Oh, vegetarian, okay.
• 44:18
  Prajit Nanu: Now we put like um uh do you like Indian food?
• 44:21
  Bam Azizi: Yeah.
• 44:22
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh vegetarian uh there's an amazing Bamgali food now uh restaurant.
• 44:27
  Prajit Nanu: Now I'm forgetting the name.
• 44:29
  Prajit Nanu: But go to Koma.
• 44:30
  Prajit Nanu: Uh they do amaz I call it fraud, like vegetarian sushi.
• 44:39
  Prajit Nanu: Uh but they've got like decent vegetarian food.
• 44:41
  Prajit Nanu: But um the amount of amazing vegetarian food in Singapore is a lot incredible.
• 44:48
  Bam Azizi: I'll try it next next token 24 to 9 in Singapore.
• 44:50
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, I'll be there.
• 44:51
  Prajit Nanu: I'll take you to some of the take me there.
• 44:53
  Prajit Nanu: Okay, I didn't realize they're vegetarian.
• 44:55
  Bam Azizi: What's what's a good restaurant here?
• 44:57
  Prajit Nanu: In San Francisco, vegetarian uh um wild seed for vegetarian is pretty good.
• 45:03
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh there is a ramen place in San Francisco, uh, which is only vegetarian.
• 45:10
  Bam Azizi: Only vegan, yeah, I know.
• 45:11
  Prajit Nanu: Yeah, only vegan.
• 45:12
  Prajit Nanu: Like uh that's also pretty good.
• 45:14
  Prajit Nanu: Uh but I like uh Lamar here.
• 45:16
  Prajit Nanu: Lamar, yeah.
• 45:17
  Prajit Nanu: That's another way.
• 45:18
  Prajit Nanu: Uh if you like Indian food, there's an amazing restaurant called Tia here.
• 45:22
  Prajit Nanu: Uh like I'm a foodie by heart.
• 45:24
  Prajit Nanu: I stay at Fillmore in San Francisco, yeah, because all the restaurants are very nearby for me.
• 45:30
  Bam Azizi: Uh Praj, I really appreciate the time.
• 45:33
  Bam Azizi: I know you're a busy founder.
• 45:35
  Bam Azizi: You have a business to run.
• 45:36
  Bam Azizi: I will let you go.
• 45:37
  Bam Azizi: But it was an amazing episode.
• 45:38
  Bam Azizi: So um excited to have you back, maybe a year from now.
• 45:42
  Bam Azizi: Um, to to get some updates on you and Cube and Cypher.
• 45:48
  Prajit Nanu: Thanks, Bam.
• 45:48
  Prajit Nanu: Thanks so much for having me.