If fintech has evolved across a wide spectrum in the last decade and a half, so has MobiKwik. Much like the industry, the startup has had its fair share of ebbs and flows and, along the way, it rode the waves that swept through the most significant sector of India’s digital economy.

Starting as a mobile wallet used for recharging cellphones and making bill payments back in 2010, the fintech veteran expanded to buy-now-pay-later services for digital purchases and then to UPI. MobiKwik is now a lending and wealthtech company.

Once a roaring rival to Paytm, is today a quiet warrior. But, what makes the story of MobiKwik interesting is the never-say-die attitude of its parents Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku.

And, it paid off. The fintech startup raised nearly $285 Mn from venture capitalists like PeakXV Partners, American Express and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority until it pulled off one of India’s most surprising fintech comebacks through an oversubscribed IPO, listing at a 58.5% premium.

MobiKwik turned profitable in FY24 with a bottomline of INR 14 Cr for the financial year. But, the RBI crackdown on fintech companies later last fiscal drowned most ventures into losses. MobiKwik was no exception.

For the entire fiscal, the company’s revenue surged 34% to INR 1,192.5 Cr, but losses stood at Rs 122.6 Cr. The first quarter of FY26 painted a more challenging picture with revenue down 20.8% on-year to INR 271 Cr and losses ballooning six-fold to INR 42 Cr.

At the recent Global Fintech Festival 2025, Taku sounded bullish on returning to profitability by the second half of FY26 with an overall improvement in performance.

“We broke many records this year. The numbers tell our success story: Achieved all-time high Payments GMV of INR 1,194 Bn, up 80% YoY,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post after the FY25 results.

MobiKwik’s core, according to a fintech analyst with a Big Four firm, lies in small merchants, low-ticket size transactions and, the most critical digital wallet model. The digital wallets were frayed in trysts with advanced digital payments and increasingly stricter RBI regulations, but MobiKwik built its business with the wallet in its core.

MobiKwik dipped its fingers perhaps into all emerging verticals, leveraging the user base of its primary digital wallets business, according to the analyst, who was authorised to speak to the media. Revenue diversification was not an easy task for listed giants like Paytm and PhonePe in a stricter regulatory regime as every move was evaluated by retail investors that in turn swung the market capitalisation.

Then what gives a rather smaller player like MobiKwik the confidence to be back in black in the next few months? Ostensibly, it’s a strategic pivot. Inc42 takes a deep dive.

Wallet Refashioned In The UPI Age

Smartphones had just started gaining traction when MobiKwik entered the fintech space in India back in 2009, as a prepaid payment instrument (PPI) provider, focussed on mobile recharges, utility bills, and DTH payments.

Revenue in this phase was straightforward – commissions from transactions. Merchants paid a small fee, typically 0.5-2%, for processing, while users enjoyed cashback incentives funded by these margins. This model capitalised on India’s cash-heavy economy, especially after 2016 demonetisation, which catapulted digital wallets into the mainstream.

The revenue model pivoted from volume by........

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