Coding Through Rejection: How Razorpay Built India’s Payment Backbone

It Begins With a Question

Every transformation starts with a question. Not a grand plan, not a market map. Just a small, piercing question.

For Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, the founders of Razorpay, it wasn’t “How do we build a unicorn?” It was simpler. Clearer.

“Why is digital payment in India harder than cash?”

Listen to them on the Blume Podcast, and what unfolds isn’t the myth of effortless success. It’s a story of relentless iteration, community roots, and building infrastructure that could scale for a billion people. It’s less about overnight victories and more about coding through the night, navigating regulatory inertia, and enduring hundreds of rejections from skeptical bankers. Two coders from middle-class families dared to fix something deeply broken.

Middle-Class Roots, Hacker Mindsets

Harshil grew up in Jaipur, pushed by family expectations to pursue medicine or engineering. Shashank, from Patna, was drawn to computers early, energized as much by code as by classroom lessons.

Their paths collided at IIT Roorkee, but what set them apart wasn’t grades—it was doing. Learning by building, testing, and failing.

At IIT, lectures were theoretical. Labs became their playground. SDS Labs—a hacker’s refuge—was less a corporate training ground and more a sandbox for creative anarchy.

Late nights were spent shipping code for joy, not grades. Cricket streaming over the campus LAN. Clever hardware hacks disguised as funding requests. Every project was a chance to build, discard, and rebuild.

That culture—the willingness to experiment relentlessly—became the marrow of Razorpay.

First Principles: Empathy Meets Pain

Razorpay didn’t emerge from a pitch deck. It began as a side project: a crowdfunding platform aiming to democratize donations. And then came the wall.

Accepting digital payments was harder than taking cash. Banks weren’t failing on product—they were stymied by process.

“How long have you been operational?”

“Show us your office.”

“Send four years of bank statements and photos of your team.”

Processes designed for six-month loans were applied to businesses moving a few hundred payments a week.

Most founders would have quit. Not Harshil and Shashank. They poked the black box. T-shirts failed. Shirts failed. Suits worked better.

They traveled city to city, hunting for contacts who would listen. Rejection came roughly a hundred times.

When one senior banker finally relented, it came with a ₹25 lakh security deposit—sourced from Shashank’s grandfather’s property sale.

That first “yes” wasn’t destiny. It was permission to leap. Jobs were quit. Family money risked. The coding marathon began—not for clarity, but for conviction.

Building Without a Playbook

Razorpay’s lack of finance or banking pedigree was its secret weapon. Other payments startups mirrored banks—every product was a bank in disguise.

Razorpay started with merchants, asking what they’d need if they could design from scratch. The result: an onboarding flow and developer experience that felt alien—by design. Digital payments shouldn’t feel like a private club, and Razorpay made sure they didn’t.

YC was catalyst, not blueprint. Zero expectations. Filling out the application forced narrative clarity. YC didn’t teach them to plan—they were already building. It confirmed the focus: ship, learn, repeat.

Word-of-Mouth as Growth

Razorpay’s early growth was Indian in its DNA: grassroots, high-touch, peer-driven.

Their first customers weren’t acquired through ads—they were found in WhatsApp and Facebook groups of the early 2010s. Questions about payments? Harshil and Shashank answered them themselves. Early adopters, largely ignored by incumbents, became evangelists.

When disaster struck—a partner yanked infrastructure mid-flight—the five-person team answered every call. Abuse, frustration, anger—they didn’t flinch. Customers didn’t just stay—they became lifelong advocates.

The lesson: show up when it hurts. That builds trust that lasts.

Reliability and Design as Trust

Unlike typical SaaS “move fast and break things,” infrastructure can’t break. Payments need the lights on. Razorpay made uptime a non-negotiable. 99.99% wasn’t marketing—it was minimum.

Design became a hidden lever. In a market where B2B products were clunky, Razorpay invested in beauty—not for vanity, but to signal care. Smooth, frictionless checkout pages were silent promises: if they sweat the small stuff, they’ll sweat the big stuff.

In fintech, trust isn’t optional; it’s foundational.

From Survival to Institution

Funding followed love from customers: YC, angels, founders from India’s first startup wave.

Razorpay’s goalposts shifted—from surviving week to week, to building a company, to building an institution. One that could outlast founders.

Product, not hype, became the moat. Regulation and access may open doors, but tech keeps them open. As Harshil says:

“The day our tech performs weaker than someone else’s, we lose our place.”

Humility, hunger, vigilance—that’s what keeps even multi-billion-dollar companies sharp.

Lessons Carved in Code

Razorpay’s story offers a blueprint for building infrastructure in real economies:

• Start with pain. If digital is harder than analog, there’s opportunity.

• Hack the system. Poke the black boxes relentlessly. Iterate until doors open.

• Build for reliability, not speed. Uptime is marketing. Reputation is growth.

• Obsess over design and service. Care signals trust—especially in crises.

• Treat customers as partners. Listening is stronger than ads.

• Build what can endure. Today’s code should be worthy of tomorrow’s institution.

Destiny isn’t given; it’s earned—one problem solved, one happy customer, one late-night commit at a time.

Every decade tells a myth. In Razorpay’s, the magic wasn’t luck. It was two coders, determined to fix something broken, stubborn enough to survive rejection, patient enough to let iteration compound.