Razorpay CEO: Indian Fintechs Must Go Global to Hit $100 Billion Valuations
Harshil Mathur argues that leveraging India's dominance in real-time payments is the key to creating global fintech giants.
Indian fintech companies have the potential to evolve into $100-billion entities, but only if they expand beyond domestic borders. Razorpay CEO and co-founder Harshil Mathur made this case at the Global FinTech Fest 2026, arguing that while the Indian market is a powerful launchpad, it is insufficient on its own to support such massive valuations.
Speaking at the event, Mathur emphasized that the path to becoming a global giant requires serving multiple international markets. He noted that India is uniquely positioned for this expansion, as the country currently accounts for 49% of all real-time payments globally. To capitalize on this leadership, Mathur suggested that Indian firms should target emerging economies—particularly in Southeast Asia—where demand for instant payments is rising and credit card penetration remains low.
The 'Complexity' Advantage
Mathur compared the current trajectory of Indian fintech to the early days of the U.S. internet market. He noted that just as domestic leadership in internet technology allowed U.S. companies like Google and Amazon to scale globally, India's mastery of real-time payments provides a similar structural advantage.
According to Mathur, the inherent difficulty of operating within the Indian financial ecosystem serves as a competitive moat. "If you have solved for so many use cases and built a complex depth of product that is required to serve the complexity of India, we are in the best place to serve more of these markets," Mathur stated. This "complexity-tested" infrastructure allows Indian firms to export solutions that are already hardened against the challenges of volatile, high-volume emerging markets.
AI and Operational Scaling
Razorpay is already putting this global strategy into practice, having expanded its operations into Singapore and Malaysia. Central to this scaling effort is the integration of advanced AI to optimize payment flows. The company has developed 'Vulkan,' a foundational AI model specifically designed for payments and trained on approximately 4 billion transactions.
Early testing of the Vulkan model has yielded significant operational gains. According to company data, the AI has driven an 8-10% increase in payment success rates and achieved a fourfold reduction in fraud. These efficiencies are critical for firms attempting to maintain margins while entering new regulatory environments abroad.
The Shift Toward Global Saturation
This strategic pivot signals a broader shift for the Indian fintech sector, moving from a focus on domestic user acquisition toward global market penetration. By exporting infrastructure designed for the UPI era, Indian firms can seek valuations that are unattainable within the Indian market alone.
"It’s very hard for me to imagine today that a $100-billion fintech company could come just serving India," Mathur said. "But I can imagine totally that a $100-billion company could come out of fintech by serving multiple parts of the world."
Industry observers will now be watching to see if other Indian unicorns follow Razorpay's lead into Southeast Asia and whether the Vulkan AI model becomes a blueprint for other firms seeking to automate fraud prevention and success rates on a global scale.