With 30% YoY growth, Ezeepay is on track to reach 1 mn users by 2025: Shams Tabrej

Ezeepay has emerged as a prominent player in India’s digital payments landscape, boasting impressive monthly and annual growth figures. In this interview with Adgully, Shams Tabrej, CEO, Ezeepay, delves into the key strategies that have fuelled this rapid expansion, particularly among small businesses and individual users. Tabrej also explores Ezeepay’s expansion plans, its focus on leveraging technology and financial inclusion, and its unique approach to retailer engagement.

With impressive monthly and annual growth figures, Ezeepay has become a strong player in digital payments. Could you share the key strategies that have contributed to such rapid growth, particularly among small businesses and individual users?

Ezeepay’s rapid growth can be attributed to its comprehensive service offering, including AEPS, Domestic Money Transfer, Mobile Recharge, Bill Payments, Insurance, and more, catering to the diverse needs of small businesses and individual users. As a B2B2C fintech company focused on financial inclusion, Ezeepay has empowered underserved populations across India, providing essential services like Aadhar Pay and Micro ATMs to simplify transactions. Its expansive network of over 7 lakh retail outlets and strategic retailer commissions has further fueled growth, driving adoption in urban and rural areas. The company’s focus on automation has streamlined operations, enabling scalability and improving user experience. By diversifying its services – ranging from utility bill payments to travel bookings – Ezeepay has fostered long-term customer loyalty. With strong growth metrics (15% monthly and 30% annual growth), Ezeepay is on track to reach its target of 1 million users by 2025, further solidifying its position in India’s fintech ecosystem.

Expanding into new regions is a significant step. What specific challenges and opportunities do you foresee in Ezeepay’s expansion into North, East, and eventually South India?

Expansion of Ezeepay to North, East, and eventually South India would represent an opportunity that comes with its own set of challenges. The key challenge would be knowledge of the differences across regions – for example, understanding local languages, financial illiteracy levels, and the needs of customers. To face this, Ezeepay will have to tailor its offerings, customer support, and communication toward satisfying their local preferences and raising awareness among regional populations about digital payment solutions. Further, a strong network of retailers and merchants will be instrumental in driving adoption in these regions. On the opportunity side, these regions happen to be vast underserved markets with a growing requirement for more accessible financial services. Building a local presence through the recruitment of 100-120 employees across all functions will serve to build customer engagement and service delivery better. With a strong recruitment drive planned for South India, Ezeepay is ready to tap into these newly emerging markets, thereby boosting regional growth along with promoting financial inclusion.

In the highly competitive fintech landscape, technology is a game-changer. How is Ezeepay leveraging AI and automation to enhance service quality and drive innovation within your offerings?

Ezeepay is utilizing AI and automation to improve service quality and innovation in all of its services. Routine processes such as payments, bill payments, and customer support are all automated to ensure that Ezeepay saves on speed and efficiency and customers do not suffer in any way. Thanks to AI-driven analytics, the company is also able to understand the users better and manage their services and offers more effectively, including targeted solutions such as pushing specific offers and recommendations to the users.

Moreover, AI tools also enable the enforcement of previously set rules and the prevention of any security risk that may arise in tampering with the customer’s trust. This is achieved by putting the most secure systems in place for the customers. Additionally, automation assists in merchant onboarding, which allows Ezeepay to grow very quickly without compromising on service delivery. Because of its continuous focus on AI and automation investment, Ezeepay is transforming its backend processes and processes that are related to customers as well; this is helping Ezeepay as a youthful innovator amidst a highly competitive fintech industry.

Financial inclusion is a cornerstone for Ezeepay, especially in rural and semi-urban areas. What efforts are you making to ensure your digital payment solutions remain accessible and beneficial to underserved communities?

Ezeepay envisions a world where everyone has access to financial services, regardless of their location, especially people living in rural and semi-urban areas. Therefore, we provide customized digital payment options for marginalized populations. The services we offer, such as AEPS, Aadhar Pay, Micro ATMs, or Domestic Money Transfer, are all made bearing in mind the users who do not have access to the traditional banking system. We aim at making these transactions easier to execute, even for those who are not so accustomed or literate with the use of digital platforms. With local retailers and merchants, we have built a network of more than 7 lakh outlets to bring services closer to the communities. We also have the provision of regional language support and train region users and merchants, enhancing acceptance of digital payments. As a result of these activities, Ezeepay is expanding the reach of financial services while fostering economic growth and inclusion in rural as well as semi-urban India.

Retailer engagement is vital in your business model, as evidenced by your emphasis on extra commissions and engagement-driven contests. Could you elaborate on how these strategies have impacted retailer loyalty and overall business growth?

Ezeepay’s emphasis on additional commissions and content engagement-focused contests has been rewarding in promoting retailer loyalty and overall business growth. By offering commissions for sales achieved, we encourage sales of our digital payment offerings among retailers so that they can extend their market and increase the volume of transactions processed. This generates income for the retailers and deepens their relationship with Ezeepay. Moreover, contestants excitedly take part in our engagements and such engagements earn them achievements and targets. Contests encourage players’ behaviours, leading to the retention of retailers, hence supporting business between players. As a result, we have maintained more than 7 lakh retail outlets, and thus, Ezeepay can serve more and more unbanked customers while creating and maintaining fierce competition within the fintech space.

Ezeepay has chosen to bootstrap its growth rather than seek external funding. How has this approach shaped your business strategy, and do you anticipate seeking external funding as you expand into newer markets?

Our bootstrap strategy for Ezeepay has maintained full control of our business strategy and fully controlled decision-making so we don’t lose sight of the long-term vision of financial inclusion. This promotes an extremely high level of resource use efficiency, focusing on sustainable growth, and reinvesting profits into scale operations, scale of service offerings, and technology. Bootstrapping has further fostered and instilled a culture of innovation and cost discipline that is necessary for building a strong platform to expand into newer markets.

We plan to continue penetrating North, East, and South India. We might need to raise external funding to fuel this growth and deepen our presence in the markets there. The funding in question would need to help advance the mission of our company without disturbing our core values or business model at large. We will continue growing organically and through strategic partnerships to push our expansion forward.