Countering chillarai' problems!

How many times have you been annoyed by receiving a chocolate instead of the correct change from a shopkeeper? And how many times have you felt helpless when you needed only a small amount of money but received only '1,000 notes from ATMs?

In order to counter these long-standing and ubiquitous problems, Rajat Yadav and Shubam Jindal, two students from IIT-Madras have founded a venture called Paymint — a mobile money transaction app. With an easy interface, and being the fastest transaction app in the market right now, it has already become a rage among te college’s students. Rajat and Shubam share their experience, and how they would like to further develop this promising start.

“We’re just typical modern day engineers. As an escape from ending up in a government job, we wanted to create something on our own!” starts Rajat. Elaborating on how they developed this idea, he goes on to say, “We realised that even in this age of mobile technology, when all of us carry a mobile phone, a person still worries about carrying cash, change and credit/debit cards. On many occasions, shopkeepers do not have change so they give you toffees in return, and then there are verbal spats. We wanted to eliminate all these problems.”

Speaking about what makes the app unique, co-founder Shubam explains that they are the only organisation that makes the transaction happen in five seconds. “One other thing I think would give us an edge, is that we’re building the app in such a way that it can be used offline too. This way, we make sure that it doesn’t eat up the mobile battery or data a lot, and can be used in places were the network is dodgy,” he muses.    

Currently accepted by all the stores across IIT Madras, it has got around 1,500 users in only a month since its inception. “The response has been overwhelming, and the numbers are great. With such a positive start, we can only hope that we can improve from now on,” exclaims Shubam.

Apart from these, he also believes that Paymint was started with a social angle in mind — “We believe that eliminating hard cash from society is very important, as this will subsequently eradicate two of India’s biggest problems — black money and corruption. When money is transferred digitally, everything is recorded. This makes Paymint’s model in alignment with the country’s benefits.”

On a concluding note, both developers are optimistic about its future. “Though we’ve not plunged into a wider market yet, in future we see Paymint being used in every small village. Moreover, we see our venture making the lives of people fast and easy,” both say to sign off.