Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Razorpay is India's largest payments platform, processing over $180 billion annually. They were also the first Indian company YC ever invested in, and went through the W15 batch.
In this fireside at Startup School India, co-founder and CEO Harshil Mathur sat down with YC's Jon Xu to talk about the early days of building a payments company in India, the near-death moments that shaped the company's culture, and what he's learned about staying in founder mode ten years in.
Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
1:11 – Discovering the payments problem
3:47 – Pivoting from education to startups
6:49 – Building in a regulated market and the one-year wait
9:10 – Losing conviction and finding it again through customers
11:10 – The bank pulling the plug two weeks after Demo Day
16:11 – Betting early on UPI before India's biggest banks
23:50 – AI, founder mode, and what it takes to build for 10 years
Razorpay is India's largest payments platform, processing over $180 billion annually. They were also the first Indian company YC ever invested in, and went through the W15 batch.
In this fireside at Startup School India, co-founder and CEO Harshil Mathur sat down with YC's Jon Xu to talk about the early days of building a payments company in India, the near-death moments that shaped the company's culture, and what he's learned about staying in founder mode ten years in.
Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
1:11 – Discovering the payments problem
3:47 – Pivoting from education to startups
6:49 – Building in a regulated market and the one-year wait
9:10 – Losing conviction and finding it again through customers
11:10 – The bank pulling the plug two weeks after Demo Day
16:11 – Betting early on UPI before India's biggest banks
23:50 – AI, founder mode, and what it takes to build for 10 years
