“We’re looking for missionaries, not mercenaries.” That’s something Sahil often said when we were trying to find more brave souls to join our mission. And we really did need missionaries. The goal ahead of us – making financial services easier to access through tech and empowering a billion Indians to live better financial lives – wasn’t just daunting; it felt like a lifelong quest.
It’s been over five years since I jumped into this mission, and guess what? Every single day brings something new to do, something new to appreciate, and something new to dream about. Honestly, there have been days I’ve wondered, “What am I doing here? Am I really making a difference? Is this the life I’m meant to live? Will I be proud of what I accomplish through this work?”
Taking a step back, I guess I was raised a bit differently – encouraged to think passionately about making an impact beyond just myself. It’s partly family history with my grandfathers, partly my own early experiences, and also seeing firsthand how people could change lives with fresh ideas and technology. Tech really is the flywheel; it lets you reach the most people with the biggest impact in the shortest time, once you get the right systems and incentives in place.
So, how did my journey at Setu even begin? I was an MBA summer intern, eager to pursue my passion for FinTech, specifically grassroot investing in India. I didn’t actually land an investing internship, but I did stumble upon the right group of dreamers. They were just starting to brainstorm how to completely rethink savings for Indians. (Our first idea back then was actually about making liquid mutual funds easier to access). Working here has always been heavily about the people, our shared ambition to make India better (and maybe get rich along the way!). We’ve likely only scratched the surface of what’s possible. Hopefully, joining forces with a larger company gives us the fuel we need to keep chasing our dreams.
Lately, our team has been talking a lot about our organization’s mission. What should our priorities be going forward? How do we set ourselves up for success? We’ve had many conversations about what truly defines us as an organization.
To figure this out, I went back to our roots: where did we start? What specific problems were we trying to solve? And how have our mission and vision statements held up? We still share these with everyone new who joins or considers joining us.
Our mission: Making financial services more accessible through technology.
Our vision: Helping deliver financial services to 1 billion people through the power of embedded finance.
The great thing about mission and vision statements is their staying power. They should stay consistent for decades because they represent huge, hairy, audacious goals. Now, how did we land on these specific statements? It really came from the fact that many of our early team members, including both co-founders, had seen the struggles with financial inclusion firsthand. They experienced these challenges while working on projects involving UPI, Aadhaar, or government direct benefit transfers, often through tech consulting roles.
If you dig a bit deeper, the focus has always been on how to improve access to financial services for the everyday person. Why? Because when people lack financial inclusion, it creates a tough cycle. Economies can’t thrive if capital doesn’t flow effectively, preventing people from living their best financial lives. And what does “living your best financial life” mean? Basically, your money works for you, not the other way around. You can pay bills without stress, grow your savings, borrow money when you need it, and have insurance protection against unexpected problems.
Is tech the only way to solve this? Definitely not! Financial inclusion can be improved by smoothing out friction at different levels, like this:
| Type of Friction | What Helps | Example in Action |
|---|---|---|
| Policy | New Policy | Jan Dhan Yojana |
| Institutional | New Institutions | NABARD |
| Technological | New Innovation | Aadhaar + AEPS |
| Behavioral | New Behavior | Digital Payments |
So, back to picking which problem to tackle: how do we choose? Well, financial services basically break down into four main areas: payments, lending, investing, and insurance. These are the core building blocks. Our goal was to figure out where we could build something to boost efficiency and reduce friction caused by outdated tech. When thinking about these financial building blocks, we also need to consider:
- Direction – Where is the money going?
- Velocity – How fast is it moving?
- Friction – What’s slowing it down right now?
- Acceleration – What could make it move even faster?
For all four of these financial areas, any FinTech company needs to understand and bridge the gap between two sides – think billers vs. customers, lenders vs. borrowers, banks vs. savers, or insurers vs. the insured. What does this gap look like in real life? It often means higher rates and fees, longer wait times, and ultimately, a lack of trust. Let’s face it, finance makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Ideally, they’d want it to just work automatically in the background. What does that mean? Frictionless payments, frictionless savings, frictionless borrowing. Is that just a pipe dream, or something we should actually aim to make happen?
“To solve the gap across these financial areas, you first have to pick one area, then focus on one side of the network (like the customer or the business), and finally, pinpoint a key problem to fix before trying to tackle everything else.“
When we thought about prioritizing, we knew that “financial services” is massive, and applying tech to it is also incredibly broad!
So, how did we pick somewhere we could really make a difference and build credibility? We kind of stumbled onto Collections. It was perfect timing, really. COVID had put up roadblocks for lenders, and traditional offline collections just weren’t possible. This gave us a chance to show why digital collections were suddenly essential for lenders. We framed it not just as a new way to pay, but as improving the whole payment workflow.
How did we decide that bill payments were important? Did we start by focusing on the biller or the lender? Not really. We actually started with the consumer, thinking about how to make their life easier with bill payments. What headaches did people deal with because paying bills was such a hassle every month? A big driver for us was realizing how much time people spend on bill payments each month – time they could be using to earn money instead.
As we tackle problems in different financial areas, one question keeps popping up: does the necessary infrastructure actually exist for companies trying to solve these problems? It helps to think about how you get from basic infrastructure to a final service in different industries:
| Layer/Industry | Infra Layer | Platform Layer | Product & Solutions Layer | Application Layer | Sample Industry Mission |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Railways | Rails | Train Wagon | Palace on Wheels | 5* Service on Trains on IRCTC | We want people and goods to move faster and cheaper on rail. |
| Highways | Roads | Container Trucks | Refrigerated Trucks | Cold Chain Tracking on Blackbuck | We want people and goods to move faster and cheaper on roads. |
| Payments | UPI | UPI Switch | UPI Autopay | Netflix Subs on Google Pay | We want people and businesses to transact faster and cheaper for commerce. |
| Lending | ULI | ULI Switch | Credit on UPI | Cattle Loans on PhonePe | We want people and businesses to get access to credit faster and cheaper. |
| Investments | AA | AA Gateway | Personal Finance Manager | Automated Finance on Groww | We want people and businesses to get access to savings faster and cheaper. |
| Insurance | ABHA | ABHA Switch | Smarter Health Insurance | Personalized Insurance on Acko | We want people and businesses to be secure faster and cheaper. |
If we want more innovation happening at the top layer (the actual financial services people use), it’s vital that nobody gets bogged down building the basic infrastructure or platform layers. That’s tough work, usually built either through public efforts (like UPI) or massive private investment over time (like VISA). Where do I see the opportunity across industries? Laying the scaffolding at the platform and solutions layer, that allows a thousands developers to innovate and build hyper personalized services.
Looking ahead, what keeps me going? It’s the chance to keep innovating alongside a bunch of smart people who are genuinely having fun and constantly tinkering, trying to find ways to make those core financial building blocks easier for everyone to access.
The Lucid Monk 