
Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath has always been fascinated by unique innovations that help those who are actually in need of it.
In one such instance, Zerodha CEO took to Twitter to shower praises on Paytm's soundbox. He emphasised that India should focus on unique ideas instead of just copy pasting ways from foreign countries. "India is unique. Copy-pasting models from the US, etc, has hardly worked," he wrote.
Kamath stressed that Paytm’s unique technology has the potential to disrupt the industry and can be termed as a game changer. The launch of Paytm's sound box device in 2019 has proved to be a boon for local shops and street vendors as well as other small companies in India.
The smart device — essentially a speaker bearing the logo of the fintech company facilitating the transactions — comes with a built-in SIM card. Most sound boxes can read out payment confirmation messages in English and multiple Indian languages, such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and Punjabi.
He even called it "one of the best examples of a product made specifically for the Indian context by an Indian fintech."
The post garnered huge likes and comments. It also piqued the interest of Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma. While thanking Kamath for such kind words, Sharma said that they were the first ones to start a QR-based payment system for the merchants before the soundbox was a success.
"Proud of Paytm's pioneering technology team whose products become mainstream for the whole country. A true believer of #HarPaymentDigital. Thank you, Nithin," Sharma tweeted.
"One of the best examples of product development with a customer-focused approach and first principles thinking. Not for the first time, it is Paytm which dreamed this up and deployed at scale," a user wrote.
Meanwhile, Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das revealed that payments via UPI (unified payment interface) have surged dramatically in the last year, with daily transactions surpassing 36 crore, up from 24 crore in February 2022.
"A recent pan-India digital payments survey (covering 90,000 respondents) revealed that 42 per cent of respondents have used digital payments," said RBI governor Shaktikanta Das.