Customers don’t resist paying — they resist poor value

Your journey from consulting to fintech to product leadership has been inspiring. If you had to describe it through a few defining moments, which ones shaped you as a product leader?
Looking back, it has been a long journey. One of the key reasons I moved from consulting into product management was my engineering background. I had worked as a developer for about five years, and there is a unique satisfaction in building something and seeing it used by people. That feeling, the dopamine rush of shipping a product that impacts users’ everyday lives, drew me towards product management. Some of the most fulfilling moments in my career have been building products from scratch. One example was when we built the fulfilment system at Grofers (now Blinkit) during the early days of grocery e-commerce in India. At that time, companies like Flipkart and Amazon were already active in general e-commerce, but grocery logistics required an entirely different supply chain approach. Another defining moment was at BharatPe, where we launched a physical card product for merchants. Creating something that people actually carry in their wallets and use daily is a very different and powerful experience. But overall, the most satisfying journeys for me have always been 0-to-1 product builds, where you nurture a product almost like your own creation. You have built products for both small merchants and digital-first consumers.

What is the most surprising insight you have learned about Indian customers?
A common perception is that Indian customers do not like to pay. In reality, Indian customers are value seekers. If you deliver real value, adoption will happen. The challenge often lies in how you monetise that value. For instance, at BharatPe, we allowed merchants to accept digital payments for free. Merchants found the product useful, but they were unwilling to pay for payment acceptance itself. Instead, we discovered that monetisation could be achieved through merchant lending. Eventually, lending became a major revenue driver for BharatPe. The lesson is that while building products, the first focus should be on customer engagement and solving real problems. Monetisation models often evolve later.

Product leaders with P&L (profit and loss) ownership often face a trade-off between short-term growth and long-term product health. How do you approach this balance?
Innovation often emerges from constraints. During the Covid-19 period, many merchants faced fraud in which customers would present fake payment confirmation screenshots without completing the transaction. At the same time, importing hardware devices such as payment soundboxes was difficult because of supply chain disruptions. Instead of waiting for hardware, we thought about what merchants already had: their smartphones. We built a solution that would have the merchant’s phone speaker announce the payment confirmation via voice notifications. This solved the fraud issue without requiring new hardware. Sometimes the most effective innovations come not from large investments but from creative thinking under constraints.

Fraud in digital payments continues to evolve. How are modern product teams staying ahead of this challenge? Fraud will always exist in some form; it is a cat-and-mouse game. Historically, fraud detection relied heavily on rule-based systems. For example, if a transaction occurred from an unusual geography or exceeded certain thresholds, it would trigger alerts. Today, with AI-driven monitoring, systems can analyse transaction patterns in real time and identify anomalies much more quickly. The goal is not to eliminate fraud — that is unrealistic — but to detect it quickly and minimise its impact, ensuring customer trust remains intact.

AI-powered personalisation and fraud detection are converging rapidly. How do you see this shaping the future of digital payments?
Payments should be seamless and invisible. Customers rarely remember when payments work perfectly. They remember when payments fail. Payments are the final step in the customer journey, the moment when the business actually captures revenue. That is why the experience must be frictionless. With innovations like biometric authentication, tap-to-pay, and AI agents, payments will become even more seamless. In the future, AI systems could automatically compare prices, choose the best platform, and complete transactions on behalf of users. That would fundamentally transform how commerce and payments interact.

If you had to bet on one layer of the payments stack that will see the biggest innovation in the next three years, which would it be?
The customer interaction layer will see the most change. Core infrastructure layers, such as acceptance and settlement, are already well developed. But how customers interact with payment systems will evolve significantly. We will also see major innovation in cross-border payments and B2B payments, which are still relatively complex compared with consumer payments powered by UPI.

Looking five years ahead, who will own the customer relationship in fintech: banks, fintech companies, or digital platforms?
Predicting five years is extremely difficult, especially in technology. Ultimately, the organisations that will win are those that deliver the most value to customers. Banks provide the infrastructure layer, but fintech companies have excelled at building user-friendly digital experiences. As technologies like AI reduce operational costs and enable faster onboarding and support, new business models will emerge. Whoever adapts fastest and delivers the best customer value will own the relationship. Reaching rural India is often considered difficult.

What should product managers keep in mind when designing for those markets?
The key is to define your core user clearly. Rather than focusing purely on geography, product managers should focus on customer behaviour and needs. India is incredibly diverse; even in smaller towns, there are microsegments of customers who can afford premium products. Understanding the user persona is far more important than simply categorising markets as Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3.

Finally, what advice would you give MBA students who aspire to become impactful product leaders?
The most important trait is curiosity. Product managers should constantly observe the world around them, identify problems, and think about solutions. Today, withAI tools, building a minimum viable product (MVP) is easier than ever. Instead of only studying case studies, students should try building small products themselves, even simple tools that solve everyday problems. If you build something that you personally find useful, it means you have solved a real problem. That is the best way to begin your journey as a product leader.