Harshil Mathur, CEO of RazorPay said India, due to the success of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and being a leader in real-time payments, offer unique global opportunities for fintech companies. “We have a situation where fintech companies are best placed to explore opportunities globally due to the experience of used cases here. They can explore opportunities in countries in South-East Asia, who might be seeking to form their own versions of UPI,” he told the audience at the Global Fintech Fest 2026.
Mathus said that Indian startups have solved for excess, nor they need to solve for niche. He pointed out that there are huge opportunities in the insurance space which can be explored. AI will present us with more opportunities here,” Mathur said.
Mohit Bhatnagar, Managing Director, Peak XV, which invests in early-stage start-ups said that currently India’s startup ecosystem commands 3-4% of the country’s entire market cap. Over the next decade, India’s startup ecosystem will produce double digit percentage of India’s entire market cap, Bhatnagar said.
“In the last five years and since Zomato went public in 2021, Indian public markets have embraced the start-up ecosystem. 22 of the 37 have taken place in the last five years, including companies such as Groww, Meesho and Pine Labs,” Bhatnagar added.
“The first layer of access has been laid. The wide space is still unaddressed and big problems still need to be addressed. Bhatnagar gave the example of Meesho, which years ago entered the e-Commerce space even when giants such as Amazon and Flipkart were already present.
But they chose to focus on tier 3 and tier 4 cities and towns with a focus on value. They were thus able to service over 300 to 400 million people who buy on Meesho. “They knew how to talk their language. There is a Meesho for financial services which can be created,” Bhatnagar added.
Mathur said that what is unique to India’s fintech growth is that “there is a form of public-private collaboration, where growth for everyone is at the same time. This has not been seen in other parts of the world. In the United States, fintech growth was led by private companies while in China it was the government. India chose a different path.”
RazorPay has confidentially filed draft papers for an IPO, which is estimated to be of a size of $600 million, media reports have said. The startup, backed by investors such as Y Combinator and Lightspeed, might target the stock market by the end of 2026 or early 2027.
