Mitesh Thakkar is the founder of MissCallPay. He has over 21 years of experience in a startup environment that includes selling, marketing, and building IT products. Mitesh has completed his MBA graduation from SP Jain and has taken product management training from Blackbolt Consulting USA.
MissCallPay – Idea and Journey
Mitesh got the inspiration to start this startup in January 2017. After the events of demonetization, during his visit to his native village in the Kutch district of Gujarat, he observed that there was chaos everywhere in the market due to the incidents of shortage of physical currency.
This was the moment when he realized the huge opportunity to develop an idea that could help people standing in serpentine queues outside ATMs and banks.
A few days later, Mitesh was attending a vibrant Gujarat summit and listening to PM Modi’s motivational speech there.
Payment via Miss Call with MissCallPay
Indians began using mobile phones with “missed calls”. Now anyone can make payments with it!
We aim to make transacting without cash easy. As simple as the very first thing we did with mobile phones. Pay with MissCallPay!
Key driving force
The ability to simplify the public’s problem and the challenge that comes with it has been a primary motivating factor for them to become a thought innovator or entrepreneur.
The satisfaction of making a change which can help the masses, can bring a change in this world has been his major driving force.
Funding
So far, they have raised Level 1 angel funding for their operations. Going forward, MissCallPay will raise more money in the process.
Challenges Faced
Any startup journey is a mixed bag of learning new things and challenges. But a major challenge before them was a new authentication method that required approval from the bureaucrats. Mitesh Thakkar had to visit various higher authorities to understand the concept behind MissCallPay.
He also realized that the priorities of the government and the bureaucrats were completely different. Thus, it was only in 2020, when the need for UPI payments on feature phone payment became a priority, RBI announced its first cohort, Regulatory Sandbox, for feature-phone payment solutions.
In spite of this innovation, he got disqualified as he didn’t fulfill the minimum net worth requirement for RBI Regulatory Sandbox applicants which was another roadblock in his journey.
Factor that has helped
It is their concept as a whole that has allowed MissCallPay to mark its uniqueness in the industry. Their product is a payment solution that suits the habits of the masses and has made it convenient and simple to make the product easy to understand and use by them.
In this way, they are focusing on helping the digitally illiterate people to do financial transactions through missed call facility.
Target audience
India has 117.6 cr wireless subscribers but only less than 20 crore use UPI. Thus, close to 97 crores, people are still to adopt digital payments. Nearly 96 % of Indian villages (5.72 lakhs out of 5.97 lakhs villages have mobile /network connectivity with over 500 million (50 crores) using feature phones.
Thus, there is a very big wide untapped market with unique opportunities for their business model MissCallPay to serve the close to a billion underserved population.
Motivation
It is the ability to be able to develop solutions that help millions, billions of people that instills in them a sense of urgency. Also, it is about making a difference in the world for them.
“No matter what product or solution you’re trying to develop, the starting is always challenging so it’s always a wise move to stay strong with your outlook.”
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