Ayush Agarwal
Appearances
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Because senior folk will come with a baggage and there will be high chances that a senior folk might be requiring a team to actually work and to deliver certain outcomes. We were not looking for those folks, right? We're looking for folks who are senior, who have certain experience, but are also open to do grant work on their own.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
And over the course of different interviews, different hiring process, we kind of assessed this ability of that person to take ownership, to work under certain pressures. We actually designed our assignment in such a way that we had assignments for every role that we hired for. And for every assignment, the typical time
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
that you can take to complete easily was one week, but we asked them to complete within two days, right? So that basically pushed them to the limit that they have to think like how to work in that high pressure, high timeline kind of environment. And that actually helps us assess whether that person is good fit for our startup or not.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
I think we, all the different modules or all the different services that we have built, we have kept scalability, efficiency and responsiveness at the top. I'll give you an example, right? On the backend, we used Rust. So I think nowadays every other company was just starting up. We'll obviously choose Moonstack, Node.js, Django to build out their backend.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
But being a payments company, I think what was core to us was reliability, scalability, and efficiency of our systems, right? So we chose Rust as our backend. And whatever systems, whatever services we are building, we are automating a lot of that using different SOPs, different workflows.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
I learned from my past mistakes. I didn't dig deep into building the product first, then selling it to the customers. This time, we actually built out just a simple website talking about the problem statement, talking about the solution in general. And that took me just one or two days to build it on Framer. And then we actually sent that website to a lot of cold emailing, cold DMing to customers.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
We have a lot of AI agents working within our workflows to automate whatever part of process that we have for the product. And
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
we have a lot of moving part that requires like manual intervention and we have tried to automate it using ai agents and other workflows that we have so yeah everything we build has to scale three months back we had zero merchant now we had more than a thousand merchants processing thousand transactions a day so i mean like that's been pretty insane for us so i think within three months we have grown so much after three months after a year
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Our product should be scalable and need to scale and every decision that we take like have scalability in mind.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Within a span of three months, we are able to build a super stable product. Because now when people actually try our product, they kind of compares ourselves with Stripe, right? So for the emerging markets, our people are calling us as a Stripe alternative for India and other emerging markets.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Because Stripe doesn't work here and we have other payment gateways, which are multi-billion dollar companies still not able to solve for international payments. But we, being an MOR, can partner with Stripe, other PGs and have abstracted that problem out and pain of collecting international payments.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
That's why I think when people compare us with Stripe or even say that you're the Stripe alternative for India and we have kind of positioned ourselves in that way in which our product is very stable, very intuitive, very fast. Our documentation for the payment integration is super smooth. I think we can compare our documentation with Stripe very easily. So it kind of gives that comfort to me that
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
We just started building the product for five, six months back. And we are here when our users actually comparing ourselves with Stripe. So that's what I'm really proud of.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
I'll not say it will be a mistake, but we spent a lot of time figuring like pre-made solutions for different problems that we have. So we spent quite a lot of time figuring out open source tech solution or like effective tax billing solutions for us. And I asked my team to write some integrations around that, that kind of wasted a lot of time. But in the end, like we have learning, right?
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
I'll not say we have made any mistakes so far, but I think during the research time, rather than building the product, we spent a lot of time iterating, trying out different solutions. If we could have avoided that, if I would have the learning before, then I wouldn't have done that.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
I think it's very clear, right? Being such a deep problem statement we are working on with such a massive market, I don't think we are stopping anytime soon. Right now, people are comparing us with Stripe and we want to live up to the expectations. So, this year going forward, we would like to position ourselves as an alternative to Stripe for India and Emoji markets and...
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Yeah, I think that will be our journey. We'll make the global payment, the pain of setting up payments, tax compliance, etc, etc. We want to make that seamless for our customers as well as any new budding entrepreneurs so that they just focus on building products rather than solving for payments and compliance. So we want to take that pain away.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Going forward, you'll see us competing with other MOAs in the Western markets.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Tony Hsieh was a founder of Zappos. He's kind of been my idol for quite a bit of time. Like when I actually started to pursue entrepreneurship, I actually read his book. The idea of customer obsession and building something that actually customer wants struck with me, right?
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
I made a lot of mistakes around defining the product roadmap as per my thinking business thinking and in the end I kind of stuck with that thing only like build only that thing what your customer wants and I think this time we are made sure that we'll only build any feature that has been requested by at least 10 people within our merchant base.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
all the potential merchants that we can onboard and started getting the feedbacks. And you'll not believe, but we are actually able to contact around 250 merchants from almost 30 plus different countries. My name is Ayush Agarwal and I'm the co-founder and CPTO at Dodo Payments.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
I think a lot of budding entrepreneurs are actually obsessed around the solution, not the problem, right? And like, if you are a techie, you tend to basically invest yourself building the solution, not solving for the problem or identifying the market, right?
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
So my only advice to all the budding entrepreneurs and all the people who come for me for advice, I actually give them only one thing that spend as much time as possible studying around the problem statement, talking to customers, validating the problem. And before diving deep into the solution, understand the market as well.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
because a lot of entrepreneurs although although like successful entrepreneurs or even the failed ones i think the majority reason for them failing is they were they underestimated the market they thought the market was super big but in the end when they were trying to monetize it when they were trying to build into that the market came out to be very small
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
you can be a very bad builder, bad entrepreneur in a large market. It is very likely that you'll build some sizable business, right? Because the market is very large. But if you're a super good entrepreneur building a very small-time market, right? Then most likely you'll fail, right? Most likely you'll not be able to build a very large company.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
So this time, when I was also building Dodo Payment, this was my key that whatever I need to build this time has to have some global and a sizable market to go after. And yeah, I think that's been that has been my learning. And that's what I advise to all the younger folks and younger entrepreneurs who are just starting their journey on the ideation stage.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
And yeah, this is this is what I tell them to most obsessed on.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Thank you. Thank you, Noah. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Dodo Payments actually came out of an idea that during my last company ride, we had a global audience. So being an Indian company, it was really hard to collect payments outside India. Because for India, I think we were able to solve that because the tax compliance, the payment gateway part was pretty straightforward. But when we have to expand across countries, right?
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Then figuring out tax and other compliance for different countries, it's very tedious, right? And if you are let's say based out of United States or India, it might be a distraction for you because a lot of bigger companies... Actually, I have a dedicated payments and tax team to figure that out. And being an early stage company, it's always a nightmare to handle payments, billing and tax.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
So that actually struck with me. And when I met my co-founder, he also had that similar idea. Make the entire process of setting up payments along with billing, tax, fraud, chargeback, etc. And abstract that pain away from the end merchant so that they actually focus on building product rather than payments, right? Which is not their core criteria.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
This is the very core problem that we kind of addressed and we started working on it. And then we actually realized there are a lot of merchant on record companies that actually exist. Like there is a billion dollar company called Paddle, which is based out of Europe. Recently, Stripe also acquired Lemon Squeezy, which is also a MOR built on top of Stripe, which is based out of USA.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
So we kind of thought there are like already this is already a proven model. Why don't we actually build this model for the merchant based out of India and emerging markets?
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Because anyways, they don't have access to stripe and collecting international payment is always a pain point because all the payment gateways don't work really well and only have like 40 to 50% success rate with all the payments. So we kind of dig deep into it, understood. I think it took us almost six to eight months to understand the model itself.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
And then we were fortunate enough to raise a venture round and then we kind of scaled the team, built out the product. Now we're in the process of scaling the company, getting more and more merchants and the feedback has been amazing. So, yeah.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
This time, I learned from my past mistakes. I didn't dig deep into building the product first, then selling it to the customers. This time, we actually built out just a simple website, talking about the problem statement, talking about the solution in general. And that took me just one or two days to build it on Framer.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
And then we actually sent that website to a lot of cold emailing, cold DMing to all the potential merchants that we can onboard and started getting the feedbacks around the problem statement, around the use case, around the solution that we were kind of proposing to them. And you'll not believe, but we are actually able to contact around 250 merchants from almost 30 plus different countries.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
And we kind of validated the problem really well. And when we told them about a solution, they kind of struck with them. The early PMF sign, which we can actually expect without...
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
building a product is that whether that person will actually buy it or not so we kind of end up with every people we used to ask right now you have allocated a problem will you buy a product will you use a product and actually like in the 250 people that we talked with around 100 of them actually said yes so that was kind of the validation for the problem itself
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
With that whole narrative, with that whole research around the problem and the solution, I mean, on that, we were able to raise venture capital, so that was kind of amazing.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Building an MOR takes like a billing solution, a fraud solution, etc, etc. There are a lot of building blocks, right, when it comes to payment. So I think there was a conscious call whether we have to build each of the building products on our own or just partner with a different platform, build a sort of layer on top of that and create as a product.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
When we actually dig deep into it, let's say if we work with a certain partner for billing, I mean, like it was posing a lot of problems around the customizability because all these different systems, they are built for individual merchants solving for their SaaS or digital products, right? But for MOR, there isn't a single solution because there aren't many MORs that exist in the world, right?
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
So there isn't any dedicated solution for an MOR. So that's when we're trying a lot, trying to look at a lot of open source tools.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
there are a lot of billing tools that are available even there are billion dollar companies for that but it kind of relies to us like after a lot of research after a lot of trial and testing that we can't use the solution we have to build our own system incrementally when it comes to like integrating different payment gateways to optimize global payments or to setting up entities across different countries we can't outsource this to anyone so we kind of mapped out the whole roadmap of the whole product infra that is required for an MRR
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Then we did cutting exercise, like how can we build a working product within two months? How can we build a scalable product within, let's say, four months, something like that. So we kind of stripped out a lot of different things that are required when enterprises are a large-sized customer. but not required by the small ones.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
So we actually trimmed down our product roadmap while building the entire infra on our own. So that basically ensured like highest reliability, highest customizability. And we can also do incremental changes on that. So yeah.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
I think this time I took on the learning from my last company as well. In my last company, it was just the business was defining the product features. It was not the customers, right? So this time I actually learned from my mistake and we actually in our dashboard, right?
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
We put this feature called feature request where you can actually see all the feature requests that other customers of ours have put in.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
that they want this feature they want this feature and if if a certain customer wants the same feature they can go and upvote right so we have a certain features that have almost more than 50 100 upvotes as of now and we already have a product roadmap defined by our customers
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
that made our entire process entire product management process very simpler right we actually pick up all the features that our customers ask and we also have certain features which business also demand so we kind of have a framework which we called as a rise framework where we do a effort impact and other sort of analysis and provide a rise score to every feature that we want to build and depending on that we prioritize within our product roadmap
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
With this exercise, we already have enough work for the next six months. We don't have to worry about that. We are pretty confident that as we progress and build more and more features, more and more requests will start coming. And I think our customers will be the only one who will shape our product.
Code Story
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
Every vertical that we have, whether it can be backend, frontend, product, design, growth, devops, etc needs a leader, right? I think during the interview process, we received like hundreds of thousands of applications on each of these vertical rides that we were hiring for. And the only thing we kind of like assess in the beginning is that whether the person is ready to do grunt work on its own.