Why Every Future Fintech in India Will Be Built on UPI | Anup Agarwal, Kiwi

Rahul Thayyalamkandy | 23 Apr 2026

Tune in here:

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-the-kiwi-founder-built-a-credit-card-for-indias/id1659392336?i=1000763192152
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7grwU8OpeOEig0ucU80v00?si=3LU6Yb57SVW1a9aQnULBlg
Youtube: https://youtu.be/CYA1hcb0RiM

Summary

He had one formula for building trust in fintech: promises kept divided by promises made.

Anup Agrawal spent years at LazyPay watching how India actually pays — and what he saw was striking. 85% of consumer transactions ran on UPI. Credit cards existed, but they weren't built for the way India's new generation spends. So he built Kiwi: a credit card designed as a delightful UPI experience, with credit rails underneath and instant cashback on top.

In this conversation with Rahul, Anup unpacks the product decisions behind Kiwi — including a data point that surprises most fintech insiders (80% of Kiwi spends are offline, the exact opposite of the industry norm), a product failure that reshaped their rewards design (users who made their first transaction at a fuel station churned when they got no rewards), and two mental models he uses to make every product decision: the Trust Formula and the Ginger Product rule. He also makes a sharp case for why retention has to come before growth — every time.

What You'll Learn

The 85% UPI stat that led Anup to start Kiwi — and why the women-and-QR-codes insight was the real founding moment
The Trust Formula: why trust = promises kept ÷ promises made, and the three micro-promises every fintech product must keep first
Why Kiwi's offline spend (80%) is the inverse of the industry norm — and what that reveals about India's actual retail behaviour
The "ginger product" rule: why a product that grows in every direction never becomes the main dish
Why Kiwi refuses to push growth until retention metrics are solid — and how they measure it (D7, D30, M6, M12)

Timestamps

00:00 | From LazyPay Data to the UPI Credit Idea

03:43 | What Kiwi Actually Is — "A Delightful UPI Experience"

05:52 | Why Gen-Z UPI Users Need Credit (The Utility Ladder)

06:43 | Virtual vs Physical Cards — and the Offline Stat That Flips the Industry

09:34 | Who Kiwi Is For — Credit-Invisible Affluents, Not Thin-File Poor

10:59 | Retention First: Why Kiwi Doesn't Push Growth Until It's Ready

12:25 | The Fintech-Bank Division of Labour

14:35 | The Trust Formula: Promises Kept ÷ Promises Made

17:35 | When Product Fails: The Fuel Attrition Story

19:31 | Cashback vs Points — Why Kiwi Bets Against Breakage

20:59 | Competing With Cred and PhonePe: Focus Over Distribution

23:07 | The Ginger Product Rule + Kiwi's Three Dimensions

25:53 | The 2035 Vision — Imagine the Taj Mahal Before It's Built

About Anup Agrawal

Anup Agrawal is the founder of Kiwi, a fintech company building credit card products designed for India's UPI-native generation. Before Kiwi, he led product and growth at LazyPay, where consumer behaviour data — specifically the 85% UPI dominance in Indian transactions — sparked the founding insight. Kiwi targets "credit-invisible affluents": users with income but limited formal credit history, who are well-served by UPI but underserved by traditional credit products.

Anup on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anup-agrawal-a2915b11

Kiwi website: https://gokiwi.in/

Rahul Thayyalamkandy

Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore. Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

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