Podcast: Scaling success and the journey of Refyne CEO, Chitresh Sharma

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders, QED's Head of Early Stage Investments Bill Cilluffo speaks with Refyne CEO Chitresh Sharma.

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Show notes

Bios

Bill Cilluffo joined QED as a Special Advisor in the fall of 2014 and became a Partner in 2015. He is currently Head of Early Stage Investments after six years as Head of International, leading QED’s Investment teams in Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Prior to joining QED, Bill spent nearly 20 years at Capital One, spanning several roles and leading several businesses. He spent the first 6 years of his career leading Marketing, product development and credit policy for Capital One’s subprime credit card business; ultimately having overall P&L responsibility, and growing the business to become the most significant player in the market. He moved on to spend 2 years in various new business development roles, spanning the telecom, medical finance and small business finance industries. Bill spent 3 years as Deputy Chief Credit Officer for the bank, playing nearly every role there was to play in the central credit function, after helping build the department from scratch in 2002.

Bill then pivoted his career to general management, leading Capital One’s Canadian, and ultimately International businesses, over the course of 6 years. Profitability of the business grew significantly under Bill’s leadership, through new product and channel introductions, acquisitions, and significant cost take out. During Bill’s last 3 years at Capital One, he led its Co-Brand and Private Label credit card business, building the business nearly from scratch to one of the top few players in the US market, through a series of acquisitions, most notably including leading the acquisition and post-merger integration of HSBC’s US credit card business, which closed in May 2012.

Bill graduated with a BA in economics from the University of Michigan, and competed the SEP program at Stanford GSB.

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Chitresh Sharma is the CEO and Co-Founder at Refyne, India’s first and Asia’s leading financial wellness suite.
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Chitresh, via Refyne, aims to empower employees to build a foundation for financial well-being. Chitresh aims to bring financial wellness and inclusivity to everyone by leveraging our technology and capital. In early 2020, he revisited the idea he proposed ten years ago – creating a business that would leave a positive social impact. His initial research revealed a stark lack of awareness about personal finance in India. The findings inspired him to combine this observation with his learnings about the benefits of Salary-on-Demand during his time in the UK, which led to the establishment of Refyne.
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A serial entrepreneur, Chitresh, founded his first enterprise at 19, an IT outsourcing and marketing company in Bengaluru. Furthermore, in 2013, Chitresh co-founded Glasgow-based Swipii, UK’s largest digital cashback reward platform for shoppers. Chitresh was also a part of Forbes ‘30 under 30 Tech Entrepreneurs’ global list in
2017. He was also a part of The Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech lists in 2019 and 2017. For Swipii, he has won awards such as UK Digital Experience Awards, Scottish Edge Awards 2015, and has been a part of UK's top 100 Start Up, Global top 100 disruptive startup, Scotland’s top 5 under 30 lists.
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Chitresh holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Christ College, Bengaluru, and a master’s degree in International Marketing from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

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About Refyne

Refyne is Asia’s largest and India’s first leading holistic financial wellness platform providing every employee with a comprehensive approach to financial wellness.
With 350+ corporates and six mil+ employees coverage, Refyne offers a complete financial journey from immediate liquidity access to financial education and protection. Their flagship product, Salary On-Demand, was launched in 2021. Backed by some of the largest funds, the team at Refyne believes financial wellness is a fundamental right to lead a quality life.

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Full transcript

Bill Cilluffo:

You're listening to the Fintech Thought Leaders podcast from QED Investors, your deep dive into the world of venture capital and financial services with today's digital disruptors. QED is a global venture capital firm focused on investing in fintech companies all the way from pre-seed to IPO. Fintech Thought Leaders brings together the most talented entrepreneurs tackling today's biggest problems. If you're looking to learn more about what motivates our founders and team members to succeed, you're in the right place. Hello and welcome to the Fintech Thought Leaders podcast. I'm Bill Cilluffo, head of early stage investments at QED investors. Today on the podcast, I'm very excited to be joined by Refyne CEO, Chitresh Sharma. Chitresh, welcome to the podcast.

Chitresh Sharma:

Thank you, Bill. I'm super excited about this podcast. Has been the talk of the town, so honored to be part of the podcast as well. Thank you.

Bill Cilluffo:

Excellent. Well, it's great to have you. Before we jump in, I'd love for you to give listeners maybe a 60 second commercial on what Refyne is and what the company does.

Chitresh Sharma:

Oh, I love this part. So, Refyne is just under two years old startup. And we are India's largest on wage access platform. Refyne was born with a simple vision to simplify personal finance. And the whole idea is we partner with organizations, large corporates, medium-sized corporates, and allow their employees to get into a financial wellness journey along with us. The entire vision is built on four main pillars, which is financial education, liquidity protections, and saving. Our core and the most used product, which has been super successful, is allowing people to access a percentage of their salary 24/7, 365 days a year. So, we have 400 corporates and close to 4.6 million employees. So, pretty excited about how the market's taken in us.

Bill Cilluffo:

That's amazing. 4.6 million employees in about two years, that's one heck of a start and I know you're only getting started.

Chitresh Sharma:

Thanks, Bill.

Bill Cilluffo:

So, I always like to start going back to the early days, going through your own journey of how you led to eventually start Refyne. So, talk about a bit of your childhood. So, where did you grow up and what are some of the things that really stand out from your very early days?

Chitresh Sharma:

Well, the whole story starts from a small town called Raipur in a very small state called Chhattisgarh. And I'll buy a lottery ticket if any of the listeners know about this place. But I've been born in a place where I've seen my parents work through the ladder, right from the zero and create something beautiful. So, my parents have been an inspiration. So, actually, I had a very early start in my career. When I was doing undergrad, I started my first startup when I was 19. It was a business outsourcing business and ended up selling at 20. And I thought the whole life is going to be that easy. Then life really happened to me. And I went to UK, because I really wanted to get the exposure and hadn't gone outside India ever. To a point that I actually took, and this is real story Bill, I actually took sunscreen lotion to UK. That's how much I knew about UK. So, the world was my bond.

Bill Cilluffo:

Not many people often need sunscreen in London, there's a lot of clouds.

Chitresh Sharma:

Yeah. I got to know that the very time I landed in London. And while doing my master's, I ended up starting my second startup when I was 23. And I ended up getting a half a million check out of an audience where I was presenting the dissertation. So, my dissertation led to the next startup. And real stuff started to begin and that's what happens when a 23 gets that check. It's early days. And your DNA is built from the first few people who back you. And I think thanks to early investors, they did help me create a DNA of sales, because for them it was all about sales. And we were again a B2B2C business. So, I sold really rapidly and we touched our first 100K very quickly, and so on and so forth.

We had amazing growth in the first two years. And then I started to realize it's actually not just about sales, it's about sustainable growth and people factors the most important thing. And after exiting that business, being the CEO and founder for eight years, home calling happened, which was the plan, but it had to wait for 10 odd years. I had planned to come back right after master's, but that one audience member changed everything. And I think I just landed during COVID in India, started working on it and Refyne was born.

Bill Cilluffo:

Let me ask a follow-up on the first one. So you started an outsourcing business at 19 while you're in university. How did you come up with that idea? Why did you decide to take that plunge?

Chitresh Sharma:

It's actually been a natural thing. Being very honest, I thought people going to be very busy doing undergrad. But all I had to study was three hours a day and most of the time it was overkill, just chilling in the university. And I had a lot of software friends which ended up again doing the same thing what you'll expect at 19 years old, partying, boozing. And I was like, we could do something exceptional, we can do something different. And one of the guys said, "Hey, can you create a website?" And one of the guys who were a friend, the dev actually created the website in 24 hours and then it was a big thing. The guy got super excited. And we got paid a hefty $300 check for something we thought was free to do. And that's when the whole thing started from website to SMS blaster.

We started building a lot of things and we ended up getting a small contract of a bigger contract. And obviously, the bigger contract company wanted to buy us out. They couldn't afford the leak. And it was a natural process, to be honest, and I think the biggest feeling was that $300 check. We can never forget that. And I took my first drink when I was 24. So, it does help when you don't drink so early on. You see things differently. But I think that $300 check made a big difference in me moving into that direction.

Bill Cilluffo:

You got to make 300 bucks instead of spending 300 bucks on less productive things.

Chitresh Sharma:

True, true.

Bill Cilluffo:

No, that's good. My son should learn the lesson from you. I don't know if he has, but that's great.

Chitresh Sharma:

Though, I miss the parties.

Bill Cilluffo:

Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. So, you mentioned you were doing your PhD dissertation. And in the process of doing that, maybe your master's thesis, but you're doing your speech and that led to a first check for your next startup. Can you talk a little bit about what your next startup was?

Chitresh Sharma:

Just a quick one, and it's interesting how we raised the fund because we didn't know anyone. I mean I was new to UK, we had no clue, no connects. And this individual, it took us three months of chasing. And the way we got to it was the director under him was what gave us a time, because we used to ask one of my business partner's girlfriend, whoever comes in the largest car, get us the visiting card. So, we got the visiting card. The first person who came in a Bentley, we called her. She loved the idea and said, "I am not afraid, but my boss might be." And the boss gave us a meeting after three months of chasing in a noisy club and where we had planned one and a half hours presentation.

And we literally had to explain the idea in a paper napkin, in a loud club. And he came in and he says, "I have 15 minutes, guys," but luckily it lasted more than that. And that's how the business happened. And it held that he understood the industry. It was about creating customer loyalty, personalized platform for small medium businesses, and quickly took off. We switched into CLO technology and started working with large brands. But effectively, we were allowing small business to be empowered to have the same technologies as the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury, giving it to the high street shops and that's how the business bond.

Bill Cilluffo:

No, that's incredible. If you think of the lessons from that experience in terms of how that influenced you with Refyne, what's one thing you feel like, wow, I really got that right, I can take that with me to Refyne? And then what's one thing maybe you really screwed up and learned a lesson from that and now you take that lesson to Refyne?

Chitresh Sharma:

Cool. I might need few more podcasts for that, but I'll tell you one each. So, I think the first big lesson is that growth is great, but sustainable growth is the prime thing. With Refyne, we made sure that we spend a lot of time on people factor. It's the first hires, the first 100 people that can make or break everything. No matter what market you are an opportunity, everything does play its own part. But people Factor has the biggest impact. And believe it or not, I sat through the first 100 people interviews, so I learned the mistake. And I'm happy that still 36% of people in our company is internally referred. So, that got working for us, so is the number.

The one thing that didn't work is that we thought that the moment we closed something with a client, it's going to activate the next month, because they've signed the contract. So, we thought they owe us a launch, but that's not really true. So, sales really happened in three different stages for us. The first stage is get them to sign the agreement. The second stage is to convince them to launch on time. And the third stage is to convince them to market to their employees. So, I think that definitely got us from an expectation of one month launch to six months on an average, because we go fully integrated, but I think we can do better. Something we discuss every time on the board meeting, right?

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah, for sure. And you can see the parallels between the two businesses you had. You're signing large enterprise organizations. It's a B2B2C type operation, which is never easy. Tons of benefits from it, but some challenges in terms of getting these things launched.

Chitresh Sharma:

Hence, not all learning supplies. In every business model you got to pick and choose the learnings you want to deploy.

Bill Cilluffo:

Exactly. Now, I know there's some direct connection between your last business and Refyne in terms of the creation. We'll get to that in a bit. But you sold that business, were thinking about different business ideas. You've already said you wanted to go back to India. How did you come across EWA? How did you decide that, hey, this is the thing I think I want to do? I assume you looked at some other ideas along the way as well.

Chitresh Sharma:

Yeah. I actually had a long list from 15 to 25, to 15, and that came the top five. And luckily, I knew my founder from other close friends and he was from that background. And it was very clear that a market of this size, so huge and humongous in so many different ways, comes huge opportunities, but comes huge risk and errors that we need to avoid. And that's how this model came in, because we knew that the real money is financial inclusion. Because only just less than 10 person are able to access organized financial product because of the credit score limitation. So, we quickly realized for us to be able to give people access to the first part of financial inclusion, which is liquidity or their pay, which is their right, we knew that it has to be a B2B2C model.

And lucky for us, our fellow colleagues, like Peter and Portman. I knew Peter from past and I was super impressed, the way they're building. And somehow we took the best of everything and created a B2B2C model. And used EWA as a Trojan horse to get into the partnership with large enterprises. And we got very lucky that the fraternity really welcomed us in the ecosystem. And this is how the model start to make sense, because you effectively partner with large organization, so you have the credit safety while giving access to pay, which gets automatically deducted from their salary paid towards the end of the month. So, the entire stack starts to make sense. And effectively, every business that I was working was fear fintech, because I knew QED is a fintech. I'm kidding. It was all about being able to do something in fintech.

Bill Cilluffo:

Chitresh, I thought it was all about eventually being on this podcast.

Chitresh Sharma:

Exactly.

Bill Cilluffo:

I mean I'm sure it has nothing to do with helping your business.

Chitresh Sharma:

That's how I connected the dots backwards. But this is how the entire business model stacked up, because we had a lot of connects. Early hypothesis, during COVID, not much to do. All you can do is pick up phone to people. A lot of people had time. And we were very, very lucky that in the first two months we ended up testing our hypothesis with corporates. And we got a lot of corporates ready to jump on it. And that's how Refyne was born in February 2021.

Bill Cilluffo:

No, that's awesome. For the listeners you referenced Peter and Portman, I mean that's the founding team of Wagestream who is an EWA company in the UK. That was QED's first EWA company that we backed. What's fascinating is I think you're a great case study of something we believe pretty heavily in a pretty universal way, which is it's great to get inspired by business models around the world and then figure out how they might apply to your home country. However, what almost never works is cutting and pasting. So, if you look at your business today, the initial elements of it, the look of the app, the core first product is close to identical to Wagestream. But if you look behind the scenes, there's way more different than similar. What to you was one of the biggest surprise? And again, you looked more broadly than solely Wagestream, but when you look to apply earn wage access to India, what were some of the things that surprised you that maybe was harder than you thought or different than you thought or you had to adapt quickly?

Chitresh Sharma:

To be honest, if I go back to those days, the only thing that's similar between us and Wagestream is the mission. Everything else about the market was different. And we are glad to have partners who advised us during the journey, right from the way you acquired the market in India is very different and the employee average ticket size are much smaller. The referral they impact the virality of product is much faster. That means the good news will travel faster, but the bad news will travel even more faster. So, I think it was a very different model for us when we started working on this later part of the first year of implementation. We saw that we've been lucky that we are able to grab a bigger market share much quicker. I still remember we were discussing getting a 100K would be a great number for first year and we ended up closing 500K employee base.

It was just beyond our expectation to acquire such. But at the same time, a market like India when it comes to volume, the average ticket size instead of expectation of being $50 was only $25. So, we had to quickly turn around and do innovations in product, where we had to bring early the automated underwriting process where we can allow people to access instead of just a percentage of their salary, a month's salary in advance. The salary which now we call a core product is salary top up, where we allow people to access one month or up to three months of their salary in advance. So, it became a hybrid model where we were trying to give people more access for emergency needs who had decent background and shown good behavior on our platform.

And also, I think the go-to market, instead of most of the market, we found that India as a market has a very community driven feeling and we ended up jumping and leveraging on that. So, instead of going very traditional marketing or most of the markets that we have seen where people will do exhibition seminars, we created our own brand called Spectrum. Spectrum became the brand where we talk about new neutral topics in the industry like ESG, which really got us a viral impact. We did just one big event in Vietnam. And I think we ended up converting 76% of the audience as our client. And one of the large clients for Uber, who would've thought an Uber client will close something after an event like this.

So, it's quite interesting, the take, how it can be double-edged sword. Because while we have a huge virality impact where we got branched to speak to each other and got us signed up very quickly, if I would assume we went wrong, it would've traveled faster. So, being able to adapt to the Indian market was pretty much challenging at different level and every level, to be honest. So, thankfully, we had surrounded with the right partners who continuously advise, don't copy, paste everything. So, luckily, we didn't do so.

Bill Cilluffo:

No, that makes great sense. You started to talk about this, let me go a little deeper. I mean one place that I think Refyne has really excelled so far is in enterprise sales and four and a half million employees signed in less than two years. I mean that's probably almost certainly unmatched in this industry anywhere in the world. Talk to me about what's your secret to success? I mean some of it might be market driven around virality and some of the positives, but that's probably not giving yourself and your team enough credit. You guys do a great job at this. What are some of the key things that you think have enabled you to really grow so quickly on the sales front?

Chitresh Sharma:

Yeah. I think it's early analysis and profiling of our customers, and really understanding how their decision making process works. It's actually living a life of our decision maker, and really, really being customer-centric from very early days. Pretty much every book we read today, we talk about being customer-centric. I think the team here lived it. They really lived it. I still remember the early sales folks had gone and the first 15 clients we signed up, we followed their protocol. If you took this decision, why, what motivated you? Who was the person you went to right after you got this proposal? And how much time did that person take to reply to you back? And we pretty much carved out all the decision making process, which made a big difference, because we realized that in enterprise sale it's not about pinging people several times or the six touch sales strategy.

I think it's about finding an advocate. It's being able to find an advocate who is always there to be your ambassador about your mission and how you can change the client's organization, and leverage that advocate to have a constant internal bureaucratic process update. Because as you can appreciate, large enterprises come with their own processes and buying process. So, having someone there to guide you and through navigating the entire decision making process, really, really helps. Because then you can actually spend more time in people who matters in the decision making process.

Where I've seen early on, I think we also do the same mistake of spending too much time with everyone from MDs to CFOs, to CHROs, and we went on blasting emails and just your regular traditional marketing. I think what really helped us is being able to craft and draft a buying process and hammer the right SPOC in the organization, and have them on your side. And it truly works. And making sure that the launch process is seamless, it's shining like a sword, it's clean, it's neat, it's a phenomenal experience where they should feel that they've signed up to a membership, a huge exclusive membership club and spend too much time in the first three months. In fact, actually the first seven days itself will make or break your relationship. So, spending those time really, really make a big difference for us.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah, no, that makes tons of sense. And presumably something that you learned a fair bit in the last company that, again, this business models have enough commonality that there's probably some you could take from one to the other.

Chitresh Sharma:

Absolutely.

Bill Cilluffo:

Let me dive into another aspect of sales. You personally are a great enterprise salesperson. And a number of the early clients came heavily from your efforts. But you've got four and a half million clients, you're looking to get to 10 soon. 100 million is not crazy in a country like India. You're never going to do that yourself. So, how have you thought about the transition from founder led sales to building up an integrated sales function and team that can scale way beyond what you personally can do?

Chitresh Sharma:

My takeaway from life has been that everyone should be taught sales. Right from the day we start doing anything, even in university there should be a subject sales. Sales is a very critical part of any founder's life. I think what really helped is I don't think we have got it right yet, because I think there's still room for improvement and we can do a better job. But what really helped me is profiling, as I said, because I wanted to replicate what I would do. I would spend more time with clients talking about other matters. If I have a one hour meeting, my pitch about the product and checking with them are they going ahead would be just last 10 minutes. The first 15 minutes is building and bonding. And we tried different ways and forms. We hired a lot of people, then we condensed the team to 19 people. We call them super 19.

And we initially did the same traditional thing that everyone would do, hire people from CRM companies or ERP companies or HRMS platform. It's a natural flow. But what you realize is different propositions and different buying customer, the decision making process required different set of people. And we quickly realized that having people who are really good at making one-to-one bond and being able to create amazing advocate, is more powerful than actually hiring people with pedigree. And so, what we ended up doing is we are now hiring people from, example, very diversified background. We have people from investment bankers who know how to build relationship early in the career. We also have cabin crew members who profile people, and exactly know the aspects of them and adapt to them during the conversation. We are hiring people from hospitality background. We have people from hospitality background doing five times better job than me in bringing data upload from six months to two months.

And it's just the quality of human connect. In such tech world where everything's become... Especially after COVID, everything was remote. And luckily, for us, as behind us, a lot of people, pretty much everyone wants to meet. So, we always, always emphasize in meeting people face-to-face. Because the bond you built, just like we did in Washington when I met you first time after two years, you've made investment. The bond you make face to face with your clients or prospects cannot be replicated. And people who can profile their customer and adapt, it could be anything. It could be as neutral topic as ESG or anything else. But able to get them to be curious and interested in you makes a ton of difference.

And I think that worked really well for us. So, effectively, almost have a replicable, predictable sales playbook. This is our top secret, but we actually analyze how many beers have you have had with clients, how many time have you gone for dinner? That matters to me more than how many emails have you sent, since it's that personal relationship that makes the big difference.

Bill Cilluffo:

I can vouch pe_rsonally that you live up to that. I think our first trip meeting wasn't actually Washington, it was Jaipur.

Chitresh Sharma:

Yes, you're right.

Bill Cilluffo:

I've never had a more memorable first meeting with a CEO than our day together in Jaipur. That was incredible. So, I had way too much wine, but a lot of fun that's for sure.

Chitresh Sharma:

I'll use this chance to sell myself and Refyne, but because of you, you were part of the signing ceremony of world's largest EWA contract of 1.6 million employees. So, I think that trip was definitely special when you came to Jaipur.

Bill Cilluffo:

It was incredibly memorable for a bunch of ways. So, hey, let me switch gears a little bit. QED has been huge believers in the earned wage access idea for years and years, largely as a much cheaper alternative for people handling emergency spending or small ticket things that they could afford, but they just don't have the cash flow and it's much cheaper than other alternatives, much easier than other alternatives. But look, with any positive product, there's always some negatives and there's some critics that say that, look, is it possible that earned wage access can exploit some of the underserved people? Are there ways of misusing products? As you do more lending, does that have a downside?

How do you guys think about balancing that? Because no matter how much good a product is doing, there's always ways of misusing that product. There's always things that can go wrong. And I know you guys think deeply about, you mentioned right at the beginning of the podcast, that financial inclusion is so much of what drives you. I mean, how do you think about that and how do you think about maximizing the good that these products can do, while making sure we take care to prevent their misuse?

Chitresh Sharma:

I think that's a very good question that we get asked with every enterprise meeting, more in certain verticals like manufacturing or security industry where the volume of people is quite large. And people think that a product like this can increase people's spend. And that is where you start using the buzzword AI and ML, because basically you use those technology to have flags that come up in the system. I think it's different layered approach where you protect people. The first is to avoid being over-leveraged. You only allow a percentage of this on demand salary. So, even if I can access my salary through Refyne, when I start with Refyne in the first three months, it's always going to be between 30 to 40% and that too on the net pay, not on the gross pay.

So, effectively already starting to build that levers that allows people to avoid being over leveraged. Then with open banking coming in India very soon, it will give us more data, which we already get through employers. We get flagged that X amount of people have already taken advances or loans from bank, but obviously they have restriction. Once with open banking, we'll get those information even more in entirety. Because the whole idea is that if someone has loans or someone has ongoing advances, the percentage goes even further down or maybe block the access to certain time of the period. So, it's making sure these levers are working continuously, which avoids people getting over leverage. And a market like India where we have seen a sudden rush of consumption, so there's a direct relationship between consumption and lending.

Lending has come in different forms. India, compared to other markets, as you rightly said, for folks who do not have credit score, everyone's a lender. Where they fuel their cars is lender, where they're buying their ration, their food is a lender. And these lenders are unorganized, and which is what RBI has played an amazing role in controlling and stabilizing the entire ecosystem. And more and more regulated entities are doing it the right way. Unfortunately, because of the existence and the early launch of payday lenders and loan sharks, things have become exploitative and predatory. But if you actually come do the commercials, Refyne still be two-third or one-third of the cost to the alternative.

And we make sure that it's very visible on the app, while continuously working on avoiding people to get over leverage by different data stream, starting right from the employer where we start. Hence, employer plays a critical role even in the underwriting process. They do flag certain set of people where, for example, our natural access will be the people who have moved probation, which is first three months. In some employers that probation can even be as long as six months. So, it's controlling the levers differently, depending on industries, and taking continuous feedback from HR to ensure we do not over leverage people and the commercials are at the right spot.

Bill Cilluffo:

That's wonderful. And again, it's a constant journey to find the same tools that can help people. I mean, people talk about fire. It's warm and cooks your food, but it can be a problem if uncontrolled. So, that makes sense. And just before we move on to our last topic, just a quick commercial based on something you referenced. You know talked about RBI's role in the market. It's interesting, I hosted a panel about a month ago talking about regulation and how regulation can really be a positive in terms of financials. And the two examples we used were RBI, and India, and the Brazilian Central bank that I think have done just wonderful jobs of trying to level the playing field, trying to increase competition, trying to increase inclusion. Nothing's ever perfect, but we see great examples around the world of really using financial technology to elevate people. And it's great to watch when there's positive stories like that.

Chitresh Sharma:

Absolutely, Bill, totally agree with you.

Bill Cilluffo:

Cool. So, let me move to our final topic, which is around leadership. Something that's relevant to all of our interviews and all of our CEOs, focus on this. To start with, I've heard you say that bad times can create great leaders. Haven't been too many bad times in the history of Refyne, but I'm sure you've gone through some bad times in the past. I mean, why is that and how have you come to think that way?

Chitresh Sharma:

I think bad times create the best leaders, is because you are by constrained of resource and time. Times and every odds are against you. Every factor that you think will work in particular order, doesn't work in a particular order. And I think clearly, my previous experience of making sure the customer experience is everything, having the right folks is very important, comes with a lot of experience that you happen to observe. And the differences you observe and remember, and keep it with you close to your heart till your last instinct as a founder, that you need to always remember that these are the things that allowed me cruise through the bad times and these are the things that probably got me into the bad times.

So, I think that ability to be able to understand, observe and find, spot those decisions or certain traits. For example, most of the time, at least in my journey when I started, the easy thing to do is just say, "Hey, you did this." And the basic assumption is, it's you who went wrong. I quickly understood, it took me quite long, seven years as a founder to understand, always start with a question. Question is leadership's biggest weapon to be able to already empower people and make them feel comfortable. Because the moment you ask something, even in the worst scenario when you start with a question, you're giving the basic necessity, basic right to the other person to justify the point. You're being a listener. So, these traits are very critical and usually they tend to pop up more aggressive in bad times than good times.

Bill Cilluffo:

That makes tons of sense. So, I know values are very important to you guys at Refyne and you've set some pretty interesting core values. There's a couple that really stand out. I mean call of duty, if I'm not mistaken, maybe playing video games is a very important part of being at Refyne. I'm not sure. But I have a feeling this refers to something else. Can you talk about that? I mean I don't think I've ever seen that show up on corporate values before.

Chitresh Sharma:

Yeah. I think call of duty is very critical part of our value chain and we have our own Refyne credo, which I'll probably share once you're back in India, we'll talk over it. But the whole idea is that call of duty signifies that it's not just what your role is in this company to do, but it's everything that needs fixing. I might be part of an operation team, but if I know that I can help the credit team a better job by certain information, is everything around you is your duty. So, the call of duty can happen anytime. The call of duty is not necessarily going to be restricted to your vertical. Especially when you're a startup and you're early on, and I consider ourself early on, is that everything around you needs fixing. So, you can't really draw the line, the notional line of this is my job, this is your job, don't tell me how to do my job kind of thing.

So, everything is borderless. The whole feeling of being borderless, leadership is very, very critical. Second thing is, in an era where it's not just about 9:00 to 5:00, at least in hyper growth startup like ourself where it's not about you need to be here for 9:00 to 5:00. It's when the duty calls. It could be 10:00 PM, it could be midnight. I've seen people, I'm sure you'll also remember the day when we were just waiting for one formality to get Uber for us to launch. I've seen people working right from 12:00 AM to 5:00 AM. And no one asked them, because we knew that if we don't do this, our launch will be delayed by a week. And we knew Bill will understand that. But it was just the inner call of duty that they wanted to deliver when it was committed. Less on to meet the deadline, but more to get the product out to the user.

So, real problems can be solved and it can come up really well. So, call of duty allows you to move around and do things without worrying about what the boundary or what my job role entails. It's whenever the company calls for or the mission calls for, you got to be there. Be it the weekend, be it any time, be it the most uncomfortable thing that you probably have never done, someone who has been in an operation role, but been put in a spot to do a sales where a SPOC has just changed from HR to an HR, VP person. You're going to switch on and wear the sales hat and do your best job, and do not worry about the result because you gave your best. So, I think call of duty signifies being able to do everything and anything that your duty calls for. And that pretty much happens every day at Refyne.

Bill Cilluffo:

That's fantastic. I love the articulation of it. One other value, another one is celebrate. Clearly a big part of Refyne is being able to jump in and pitch in. And if it happens at midnight, it happens at midnight, but it's also really important to celebrate. Can you talk about how you came up with that as well?

Chitresh Sharma:

So, when I landed in India, I quickly in the first few months realized one thing, India and being proud to be an Indian, we Indians are very emotional. Want to motivate, you got to connect with heart. If you can connect with the heart, money is very secondary, wealth is very secondary. It's just about the bond we share. I think that emotion does play to a edged sword. The one way it can really help you bond with people and allow you to do things very aligned, as a force towards the one goal. But the same time people want to be felt recognized and appreciated. And I think it's universal. People would like to be recognized and given the credit for the work they pull in. And that is exactly what we notice. And just being able to put up a award celebrate on the wall doesn't do it.

The leaders themself have to pull in and move things. You might have a tough meeting, but you got to show up, the game face on and celebrate. So, early on, we started doing small things that matter the most. I'll give you an example. We have the most busy channel in our Slack is what we call shout-out channel. So, what happens in shout-out channel is anyone who derives any value or sets an example of any of the seven values we have, they give a shout-out in those channels. So, it's almost like ringing a bell. It could be very noisy because we are on the call. But so, we created a shout-out channel. And you won't believe on an average, every day we see 30 to 40 shout-outs where colleagues shout-out each other. It's seen across the company.

It could be as simple as, "Hey, I couldn't take a meeting, you took the meeting for me." Be it internal or external, here's a shout-out. Or a shout-out of someone who forgot to change the tax information because the new rules applied, but someone from finance team just did it for them so they don't get their tax optimized. So, these little things where people care for each other. And when shout-out happens, people recognize I'm being recognized, I'm being seen. And it doesn't necessarily need to be by the leaders, but even my coworkers, my colleagues. Bill noticed something about this. So, that matters and that makes people's day. And we do this celebration in different magnitude order. A shout-out is one thing. We have where every annual event towards the end. Refyne is such a short period that everything we do feels like recent.

Bill Cilluffo:

You're only two years old, everything is recent.

Chitresh Sharma:

Everything is recent. So, we have this thing where when we meet in our annual meetup, we have Refyne got talent, where people will show up with their talent, someone who's amazing guitarist or someone who can dance. It's small things, but the recognition is made. The stage is put up as if it's real American Got Talent. The feel is the same, the experience is the same. And this is what bonds people, this is what real celebration is. Celebration is not just showing up for a party or a dinner. It's making things interesting where people can get recognized and being given credit. I think that's really what celebration is about.

Bill Cilluffo:

When you hit 100 million customers, we're going to find a way to get Simon Cowell to come in and be the judge.

Chitresh Sharma:

Let's do that.

Bill Cilluffo:

That'd be absolutely fantastic.

Chitresh Sharma:

Indeed.

Bill Cilluffo:

So, hey, one of the things we had the chance to do is speak to Deepak on your team, who again, switching gears to another topic, said, you have a wonderful ability to take complex problems and distill them into their core fundamental questions. And how do you break down things into manageable components? How do you think about that and where did that come from?

Chitresh Sharma:

I think it happens naturally to most of the founders, I would assume, is just because the life throws everything that you don't plan for. And again, going back to the questions, scale, being able to ask questions allows you to get to the bottom of the cause. I think the cause is the most important factor for any outcome, because everything that you are seeing is derived because few things have already happened. Because by the time the founder gets to know, it's gone through certain phases. Sometimes it's new to us, but it's very, very important to back connect the dot. As you rightly said, everything was done for coming to this podcast. So, the whole idea is to be able to figure out why this happened and what caused it, because that allows you to avoid that and that allows you to fix where the problem really is.

Most of the time I've seen, and there are a lot of founders where we share about, sometimes we go by the outcome and assume, because of my past experience. But things are changing so drastically. The organizational science is so complex. The same outcome of a problem could be very different reason to what we would've experienced before. So, it really helps when you start getting into the question modes, because that also trained the team because they learn from that experience. And questioning really helps you get to the bottom of it. And then you sort it by logics. And most of the time the team who brought the problem to you itself will come up with a solution. Just a bit of guidance and being able to ask the right question. So, I think the biggest trait and the most powerful trait a leader can or a founder can have is being able to ask the right question at the right time, at the right set of people. I think it's very critical in our job roles.

Bill Cilluffo:

I would agree with that. And by taking that approach, I think you also help the people you're asking to learn. If you're always sharing what you think the answer is, and they might get a tendency to rely on you versus making them think is hopefully great for development too. We've talked about a number of things that I think you do so well, sales and setting the culture and problem solving. What's one thing you wish you were better at?

Chitresh Sharma:

I wish I was better at creating better L&D design for the company. I really, really wish I could create a platform where the company's able to create leaders for future. I think we have done a great job because of the colleagues and the amazing team we have and the advisors we have, where we managed to pull together a team, which is right for today and maybe tomorrow, but not after that. I think it's very important to create development program for people to be ready, because that's one thing I ask myself, am I the CEO that the company need after 12 months or after 24 months? And those are the questions that every leader, every people should be asking them themselves, because that's really what we are. Because what we are doing, we are already doing it and tomorrow's already well planned, but what after?

And L&D for me is a very complicated science and a mixture of art, I would believe. There are a lot of things that are talked about, there are a lot of things that become very standard on packaging. But I don't think I've got a solution that can really make a difference yet, because ultimately I like to see tangible result, which I can monitor with point A to B and measure it. I don't think I've managed to find that. And I think it's hurting us a bit, but I'm hoping I'm in the quest. So, hopefully, now so many people are listening, someone will ping me, "Hey, I have an answer."

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah. I have a feeling if you're on a quest, you're going to figure it out. So, that's awesome. No, I appreciate that, Chitresh. I mean, no one's ever got it all figured out. It's all a big journey. So, I guess I have one final question that we tend to ask at the end of all of our podcasts. Hopefully, we've got a number of young aspiring entrepreneurs listening. You've now done it three times. What is one tip or one piece of advice you would share with an aspiring entrepreneur?

Chitresh Sharma:

So many, but the one most powerful thing that has worked for me is ask away. Ask, as well speak to people. Don't be shy thinking what the person's going to think, because the person next to you in the audience could be your seed investor or the person who you know might be able to connect you with the right... And I remember Dan connected us well. And I didn't know Dan would know you guys, and you know how the first round got formed. So, never shy away from your ask. I think most of the time the biggest difference is, and some people can read it as your first step of action towards what you have planned, but being able to ask people for anything and everything that you believe is right will help a long way. And effectively, that's the bottom line of sales too. Don't be shy to connect with people and ask them.

And I think that has helped me a lot. Because no matter how cliche this line sounds, but network is the net worth. It is so true, and it's proven me again, again, on being in the right direction. Because the same person could be your client, the same person could be your first check in the business, the same person could be a brilliant mentor or a coach, and the same person could be one of your leaders when you start a company. So, you never know what happens. So, ask away and take that first step for the conversation, I would say.

Bill Cilluffo:

Oh, that's great advice. Thank you so much. But look, Chitresh, it's been amazing having you here today. It's always fun. Someone you work with very closely in one context, stepping a little out of the regular context. I've really enjoyed our conversation and really appreciate you joining us today.

Chitresh Sharma:

Thank you, Bill. I loved it and I look forward to listening to this.

Bill Cilluffo:

This has been the Fintech Thought Leaders podcast, your window into the world of venture capital and financial services with today's digital disruptors. QED is proud to provide the best fintech advice you can get. To learn more or to read the full show notes from today's episode, check out qedinvestors.com and be sure to also follow QED on Twitter and LinkedIn at QED Investors. Thanks for listening.

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