Having a State Bank account that wasn’t net enabled made Abhishek Nayak realise there was a large chunk of people who didn’t have access to online transactions or would rather pay cash. After reading that many customers of online bus ticket service Red Bus booked electronically but preferred to pay in cash, Nayak convinced the company’s founders — his seniors from BITS Pilani — to let him collect the cash from customers as a pilot. Arpit Mohan came on board to help with the technology and Gharpay was incorporated in April 2011. The company collects cash from customers at their doorstep in 900 pincodes across 14-15 cities.

It’s now got over 190-200 customers mostly in the e-commerce space (companies like Red Bus, Cleartrip, Times Classified and Fetise) and reaches out to about 15,000 people a month. Gharpay collects about Rs.4 crore of cash every month on behalf of its customers and collects a fixed fee plus a percentage, depending on transaction volumes. It specialises in dealing with companies that have digital goods such as tickets, coupons or classified bookings. “We’re a payment solutions company rather than a logistics player,” says Nayak.