Meet man, used Rs 8 lakh savings to start business, now owns fintech company worth Rs…, his net worth is Rs…

Scroll down to read the inspiring story of Mobikwik founder Bipin Preet Singh, who used Rs 8 lakh from his savings to establish a small startup and soon turned it into a major fintech company with a yearly turnover in hundreds of crores.

Starting a business from scratch can be a challenging task and and a very risky endeavor if you choose to invest your entire life savings in an entrepreneurial venture as success is not guaranteed. However, there are few who are brave enough to take this risk and succeed in building a thriving business.

One such example is the inspiring story of Mobikwik founder Bipin Preet Singh, who used Rs 8 lakh from his savings to establish a small startup and soon turned it into a major fintech company with a yearly turnover in hundreds of crores.

Who is Bipin Preet Singh?

Bipin Preet Singh, a Delhi resident, is an IIT Delhi alumnus who worked as a system architect at a tech firm called Freescale Semiconductor. It was the late 2000s when Singh noticed that surging use of mobile internet in India, and developed an idea to create a digital payment solution which protects bank and card details of users during online transactions.

A LinkedIn post detailed Bipin Preet’s inspiring tale, revealing that despite having a solid idea for a startup, he lacked the required finances. Ultimately, in 2009, Singh took the plunge and decided to invest Rs 8 lakh from his life savings to rent a small office in Delhi’s Dwarka and established MobiKwik, a fintech startup which offered prepaid recharge options for all telecom providers in India.

The rise of MobiKwik

Working from their tiny Dwarka office, Bipin and his wife, Upasana Singh, worked on new solutions to make MobiKwik more accessible and easy to use for users, and soon introduced an SMS-based recharge solution for users who did not have internet access.

However, traditional mobile services had certain limitations at the time, and to circumvent those, Bipin decided to shift MobiKwik to a ‘pull’, model, allowing users to directly access recharges and premium apps. The innovative feature helped Bipin’s startup to land lucrative partnerships with major brands like PVR and Café Coffee Day.

By 2015, MobikKwik had amassed 15 million wallet users and 25,000 merchants, but a couple of years later, several new fintech startups and digital payments apps, backed by tech giants, began mushrooming in India. Recognizing that it would be nearly impossible to compete with such entities, Singh sough investors in MobiKwik, and sold a 10.83% stake to Bajaj Finance.

The move proved to be a masterstroke as MobiKwik’s user base surged to 100 million users, with $2 billion in transactions annually.

In 2024, a decade and a half after it was established, MobiKwik is one of the leading fintech companies in India, with an annual turnover of 890.32 crores, an increase of 58.67% from 2023.

Today, MobiKwik has a market capitalization of Rs 23,567 crore, while Bipin and his wife, Upasana, have a net worth pegged at Rs 2,260 crore.