Business Context
Rupifi’s credit product is embedded into wholesale marketplaces (Walmart, Metro, Zomato Hyperpure, Swiggy, Redbus etc.) and served retailers directly. Retailer-by-retailer acquisition was expensive and we had a huge untapped market of offline distributors.
The Structural Opportunity
Three outcomes from one product
Acquisition flywheel - Each distributor brings their retailer network
Underwriting data - Distributor invoices are the most reliable retailer credit signal in existence, and no bank or NBFC had access to it
New revenue stream - SaaS fees on top of credit volume
The Strategic Bet
What we could have built vs. what we built
Option
The problem with it
Tally plug-in + Payments dashboard
The insight that unlocked this: Distributors don’t abandon Tally (or their ERP) - they can’t. Every invoice, credit note, and tax filing runs through it. Any tool that ignored Tally would be a third system to manage, not a solution.
MVP scope (deliberately narrow)
Tally sync → invoice and payment data in one place
Payments dashboard → visibility without the accountant
WhatsApp reminders → formalising behaviour that already existed
Organisational Buy-in
Three negotiations that shaped the product:
Research before solution
Pushed back on moving straight to wireframes. Framed as de-risking: a few weeks of structured field research costs less than building the wrong product. Research phase approved.
The Tally (ERP) pivot
Original scope had no ERP integration. Research revealed it as the core adoption risk. Brought evidence back to Engineering framed as retention risk, not design preference. Integration added to scope.
MVP discipline
Held the line against launching with reconciliation, analytics, and multi-role management. Argument: a smaller, faster launch gives us signal a larger, slower one can’t. Deferred features went to V2 roadmap.
What We Executed
V1 — June 2023
What shipped
What we deliberately skipped
Dashboard with invoices, customers, payments et al
V1 usage surfaced multiple gaps → became V2 priorities:
Customisable interface - Some users wanted to see more data, some users needed simplicity
Support for mode customer data points like multiple addresses, warehouses and ability to deep-dive into the data
WhatsApp reminders should be configurable - good customers hate frequent, intrusive communication
Insights on top of tables are not actionable or highlight any business trends
V1 relied on existing angular libraray, but we need clean modern, light, flexible, scalable design system for the product
Outcomes
FY 2024-25
All metrics from this period
Active Distributors
Transacting Retailers
SaaS Billing Revenue
More On-Time Payments
Manual Recon Time Saved
Reflection
V2 & ongoing changes
Customisable interface - start with managing column position and visibility
Custom reminder logic for customers - workflow builder for reminders & other actions
Actionable dashboard - Show data trends, actionable data, surface at-risk accounts et al
Paisa 2 design system - rebuilt component library, reduced handoff time, shared across products
Investing in the Paisa design system in V2 was the right call - but it should have been a V1 prerequisite. Building without a system created inconsistencies that cost more to untangle than we saved in speed. AI assisted development wasn't adopted yet and that resulted in engineering using readily available component libraries & design team adapting to that. The lesson: design system investment isn’t a post-launch luxury. With AI assisted development, it can speed up the product launches.
Sneak peek - Present
The product has matured since launch and here are some key experiences that have evolved since -
Invoice Details
Distributors can view and manage all invoices created against their retailers on the ERP in this section. This also enables them to filter and analyse the invoices to make business decisions, push sales and communicate with the retailers. All invoices created here will also get automatically synced on the ERP, thus maintaining consistent data across business and finance teams. The columns are customisable and actionable insights present on top of the table.
Payments
All payments made by the retailers will be visible here and automatically adjusted against open invoices in FIFO order, reducing any manual reconciliation effort. For any extra payments, refunds are automatically initiated or a credit note is created in the system & ERP. Distributors can also manually record payments made by retailers and sync it across the ERP.
Customer Deep-dive
View and analyse business data at a customer/retailer level. This helps distributors identify at-risk and well-performing retailers and tailor their strategy accordingly. Whether it is doing proactive sales calls to good customers or collection visits to at-risk retailers, this helps distributors use their resources effectively.
Bulk Actions
This is primarily used by distributors for setting up the product for their business by uploading all business data.
This also helps businesses that don't use any ERP to bring their data to the product to digitise their business and manage their customer sales data.
Workflows
Create personalised experience for customers or customer cohorts. Creating customer cohorts based on risk or other metrics can help in creating distinct experiences for users and manage risk easily. This also enables Rupifi to provide value added services like AI calling, tele-calling and field visit. Thsi is particulaly useful for distributors by delegating collection, save cost of hiring, utilise the time of staff for sales and business growth.
