Some brave people take the plunge by taking risks in life and become successful, and the rest is history. One such inspiring story is of Upasana Taku’s journey from being a Stanford graduate to the founder of a mobile payment company in the country,
Upasana Taku, the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the fintech firm, has an inspirational and encouraging story.
Born in Gandhinagar to a Kashmiri family, Taku’s parents were professors. She did her schooling in Surat and studied engineering at NIT Jalandhar.
Thereafter, Taku pursued a Master in Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. There, she got intrigued by entrepreneurship. After graduating from Stanford, Taku worked at HSBC and Paypal. But she was always passionate about doing something at the grassroots level. In 2008, she moved to India.
In December 2008, she met Bipin Preet Singh, the man who would co-found MobiKwik with her. Singh was working with a Noida-based chip company at that time and was interested in starting an e-wallet firm. In August 2009, Singh established MobiKwik and Taku joined his company a few months later. Later, they got married.
The couple initially faced difficulties in their bid to make MobiKwik successful. No bank was ready to give them a platform, it was difficult to hire employees and funding was an issue. But they conquered all odds.
In 2012, Taku founded Zaakpay, a subsidiary of One MobiKwik Systems. The platform offers a digital payment gateway for e-commerce firms.
In 2018, Taku got an award from the President of India for being the first woman to establish a payments startup. She also featured in Forbes Asia’s Power 25 Businesswomen list in 2019. The company was valued at a staggering $700 million in 2021.
