Bhubaneswar: From the streets of Cuttack in Odisha to the helm of one of India’s prominent unicorns, Asish Mohapatra’s entrepreneurial journey has been shaped by ambition, persistence and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by small and medium enterprises. The co-founder and CEO of OfBusiness, Mohapatra, has built a technology-enabled platform that combines raw-material procurement with credit for SMEs, taking the company into India’s coveted unicorn club.
Mohapatra’s journey is also part of a rare entrepreneurial partnership. His wife, Ruchi Kalra, is the founder and CEO of Oxyzo Financial Services, which achieved unicorn status after raising $200 million in a funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners, Tiger Global Management and Alpha Wave Global. Mohapatra’s OfBusiness had entered the $1-billion valuation club earlier after receiving backing from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp.
The development made the couple India’s first husband-and-wife pair to head separate unicorns, according to a Bloomberg report.
Roots in Cuttack
For Mohapatra, the journey to India’s startup ecosystem began in Cuttack, where he grew up. In an interview with a digital platform, he reflected on how his upbringing in Odisha shaped his outlook towards ambition and achievement.
In an interview with Subroto Bagchi, he had described Cuttack as a city that is closely connected and united, and bound by reality. He recalled growing up with what he described as a “lower-middle-class” mindset, despite his family being relatively comfortable. “We are always at ground zero, if you are not at ground zero, you will not grow,” he had told Bagchi in the interview.
Mohapatra had spent his growing up years in Kharagpur before moving to Cuttack, where he stayed for about 10 to 11 years. He had mentioned that during his stay in Cuttack, he had realized that people in the city, back then, had similar dreams. He recalled how everyone around him in Cuttack wanted to study in Rourkela and then work for IT companies, precisely Infosys. Whereas, as he put it, in Kharagpur—where he spent the first 10 years of his life—people had different aspirations. So, this difference in mindset was the first thing that struck him about Cuttack and stayed on as his memory from the city. Both his parents were pursuing their research at IIT Kharagpur, when he was born. That’s the reason why he spent his early years in IIT-Kharagpur.
His hunger for knowledge had developed quite early in life. In the interview, he shared an anecdote that reflected his thirst for knowledge and a curious bent of mind. He had studied in SCB Medical School, Cuttack. While he was in Class 3, his school teacher had asked the students to watch cartoon shows of Walt Disney and come prepared the next day to be able to write essays on their favourite characters. Unlike other students, Mohapatra researched on Walt Disney as he was curious to know who was this man whose name was printed above the title of each cartoon show. And as he read about him in the books he gathered from a library in Saheed Nagar, he was inspired. For Mohapatra, Walt Disney was the greatest entrepreneur that he had ever known as the latter, who had once slipped into penury, rose through depression to build his conglomerate. When Mohapatra wrote about him, he was not taken seriously as that apparently wasn’t expected of his age. Through such incidents, he had realized that dreams were bound by their limitations in Cuttack. But he immersed himself in search for knowledge and in learning everything that was happening around the world. Beyond these episodes, he has been fond of Cuttack’s culture and cuisines and swears by the taste of ‘thunka puri.’
His academic journey eventually took him to the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He later completed an MBA from the Indian School of Business.
From consulting to entrepreneurship
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Mohapatra worked across consulting, consumer goods and investment banking. His professional experience included stints at Reckitt & Colman, ITC Limited, McKinsey & Company and Matrix Partners.
His time at McKinsey gave him exposure to businesses and their operating models, while his experience at Matrix Partners brought him closer to India’s emerging startup ecosystem. But alongside his professional career, Mohapatra was developing an ambition of building something of his own.
That ambition eventually resulted in OfBusiness.
Founded as a technology-enabled platform for SMEs, OfBusiness works at the intersection of commerce and finance. It facilitates the procurement of industrial raw materials and provides credit to businesses that often face difficulties accessing working capital through conventional channels.
73 rejections before the breakthrough
The road to building the company was not straightforward. According to Mohapatra’s account in his 2019 interview with a digital platform, the founders faced 73 rejections when they initially approached investors in 2016.
Investors were sceptical of the company’s emphasis on profitability and its unconventional combination of commerce and finance. Rather than pursuing growth at any cost, the founders adopted what Mohapatra described as a “savings mindset”.
The approach extended to the company’s early operations. The team travelled by buses and trains and deliberately stayed close to its SME customers. Mohapatra referred to the importance of having “dirty shoes” — a philosophy centred on understanding customers by being on the ground rather than relying solely on boardrooms and spreadsheets.
The company focused on what he described as the “fat middle” of India’s economy — businesses that are neither large corporations nor very small enterprises, but which require reliable access to raw materials and capital.
The three-part model
OfBusiness eventually developed a model built around three propositions: “Buy from me, Borrow from me and Belong to me.”
The fundamentals of his business, as he revealed in a more recent interview with podcaster Raj Shamani, is based on a three-pronged approach: providing his clients with the right kind of raw material, capital for manufacturing items with the materials and revenue generation opportunities.
He started the business with the manufacturing of guardrails, for which he provided steel. As he added new verticals for revenue generation for his clients, prinarily SMEs, to his business, he realised the hardships often faced by the companies. “Every day, at least 18,000 to 20,000 tenders are released. So, it is a challenge for the SMEs to know which is appropriate for them. They have to browse at least over a thousand websites in a day to know what works for them. But we used technology to ensure that the client can get the tender at his doorsteps by just one click. Thereafter, we also provide raw materials and capital for his business,” he added.
The model allowed OfBusiness to combine two traditionally separate functions — supplying raw materials and providing financing — within a single platform.
The company subsequently grew into one of India’s unicorns, with its valuation crossing the $1-billion mark after SoftBank backed the business.
Business mantra
Revealing his business mantra for credit business, he mentions in the podcast that it is essential for businessmen to not skip any ‘signal’ that they come across in daily life. Elaborating what he meant by that, he said: “Suppose, if you are walking on the streets and you spot hoardings of a certain political party or something being razed down, you will have to notice it and analyse how will the party coming to power or the demolition will affect your business.” Also, he insists on finding the cheaper source of money and have a global approach. To build trust in business, he tells Shamani that it should be a slow process. “If there is any loss, own it up and then trust builds up. To build up trust, you should take up each other’s losses,” he said, adding that trust can be build up through actions and not just words.
A partnership with Ruchi Kalra
Mohapatra’s entrepreneurial journey is closely intertwined with that of his wife, Ruchi Kalra.
Kalra is also an IIT graduate and holds an MBA from the Indian School of Business. She studied chemical engineering at IIT Delhi and later led the Retail and SME Banking Service practice for McKinsey in India.
She went on to establish Oxyzo Financial Services, a financial services company focused on SMEs. Oxyzo currently says it serves more than 3,000 SMEs across India, disburses more than ₹4,000 crore annually and has more than ₹2,000 crore in assets under management.
With Oxyzo’s latest $200-million fundraise taking its valuation to the unicorn threshold, Kalra and Mohapatra became a rare husband-and-wife entrepreneurial team, each leading a separate billion-dollar startup.
Growth without abandoning profitability
One of the recurring themes in Mohapatra’s account of building OfBusiness is the emphasis on profitability rather than growth for its own sake.
He has described his approach through a combination of hunger, hustle, humility and honesty. Hunger, in his formulation, represents the desire to pursue something significantly larger; hustle represents sustained hard work; humility means remaining willing to learn; and honesty involves confronting failures rather than avoiding them.
That philosophy also shaped the company’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Mohapatra’s account, OfBusiness chose not to treat its employees as a cost to be cut during the crisis and instead continued to invest in its people, including giving salary hikes in July 2020.
