Founded in 2016, PayNearby is a financial services firm that enables more financial access in India. The startup has 850+ employees and has raised funding from Tibrewala family-owned billion-dollar conglomerate.
The quintessential finance lesson every Indian child learns while growing up is ‘a penny saved is a penny earned'.
Anand Kumar Bajaj’s first lesson was no different — his father stressed the importance of saving money and using it wisely.
“My father would often share how people in small towns like ours did not have easy access to banks, and how one often needed to travel long distances to access banking facilities,” he tells YourStory.
It was a problem Anand had played witness to first-hand on numerous occasions, and it formed an essential part of his understanding of money and finance. Small towns did not have the luxurious, easy access that bigger cities enjoyed, and that didn’t sit well with him.
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After graduating from BITS Pilani, and a decade at ICICI and YES Bank, he realised that the gap between banking and finance in urban metros and rural areas only kept widening. This was something that needed attention and a solution, and Anand took up the challenge.
He teamed up with Subhash Kumar, Yashwant Lodha, and Rajesh Jha — all of whom have expertise in banking, payments, and financial services — and launched PayNearby, a fintech startup.
PayNearby is essentially a last-mile banking services provider, which helps people in non-metros and rural India access financial services easily. The startup’s modus operandi is to partner with neighbourhood retail stores such as medical shops, tailors, newspaper vendors, and kirana stores and extend access to financial services via its platform.
