In our latest episode of the Wharton Fintech podcast, Anchit Gupta (WG '21) sits down with Nitya Sharma, CEO and Co-Founder of Simpl. Simpl is a technology company that offers Pay-later solutions in India. Simpl has revolutionized online checkout in India by creating a market-leading Pay-Later platform, empowering e-commerce merchants to offer their consumers 1-click checkout, a line of credit at POS, and full buyer protection.

Before starting Simpl, Nitya worked on Wall Street for more than 10 years, where he structured, traded and risk-managed structured credit portfolios at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. Before that, he was a co-founding portfolio manager at JNF Financial, a distressed credit hedge fund from 2010–2014.

 

Nitya initially moved back to India with the objective of starting an emerging-markets focused hedge-fund. However, he experienced the shortcomings of the Indian payments and credit stack first-hand when his credit card application was declined. This experience prompted him to dig deeper into the Indian payments landscape and subsequently led to the founding of Simpl.

In this interview, Nitya shares:

- His educational background and journey as an entrepreneur

- His motivations for launching Simpl

- Simpl's business model and the challenges of underwriting risk in a cash-first economy like India

- Differences between banking infrastructure in India and the US

- Simpl's plans to compete with financial incumbents as well as big tech firms such as Amazon and Google

- The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Simpl

- Nitya's future plans for the organization

Nitya has his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College and his Masters in Financial Engineering from the University of Michigan.