Helping businesses realize their full potential has always been the vision of Volopay, and now it has better resources to do it. Of course, recognizing a problem is a lot easier than it looks. The situation speaks for itself. As a young child, one of Volopay’s employees realized there was a problem with how corporations managed their money.
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She grew up saving receipts after watching her mom save them. It was a habit because she was always her mother’s plus one on corporate trips, so she assumed it was something everyone had to do. But, things would be very different if her mother had a corporate card. No stuffed drawers of faded paper, no dedicated travel pouches for every tea or coffee sipped. We wish we were talking about a time before computers, but this was as recent as 2017. “It’s a weird lesson to learn at a young age,” she shares. “Watching your parents, who you view as upper management professionals, collecting paper because one lost sheet can mean a loss of thousands of dollars.”
The Co-Founder and CEO of Volopay, Rajith Shaji, had a similar epiphany. One long trip to Singapore was all it took to finally throw in the hat and decide that reimbursements were not cutting it. Paperwork, invoices, receipts, endless wait for getting paid back – far too much of a hassle on employees and pain to account for. From there, leaping to the conclusion that businesses have fundamentally broken finance operations was a justified move.
It was a conclusion that had verifiable, visible proof. Companies worldwide were juggling half-baked SaaS solutions, had little to no digitization or automation, and there was a shortage of affordable all-rounded platforms. Suddenly, it became abundantly clear that finance is not one of those areas of a business where “don’t fix what hasn’t broken” works. Instead, there is a need to constantly be improving these systems and bringing them up to speed with technological advancements, so that there’s a lesser manual burden on employees and greater potential for scaling.
Where did Volopay start, and what’s the problem it’s solving?
Volopay is an all-in-one expense management and solutions platform. It’s exactly what it sounds like. The company has engineered a single platform, a single spot to take care of every aspect of corporate finances. It’s a finetuned amalgamation of AI, technology, and millions of global cases on user experiences. Reimbursements, corporate cards, a credit line, virtual cards, accounting integrations, corporate travel – you name it, and Volopay has a solution for it in the same spot. And it’s a solution that works.
Volopay launched with an ambitious dream. While not ambitious in its goals, but certainly in its disruptive approach to reshaping corporate finance. But the goals proved to be significantly achievable. Since the beginning, Volopay has acquired hundreds of clients in Singapore and Australia and is now launching in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Many of its clients have the same thing to say. They came for one solution but ended up staying for the plethora of other product offerings that allowed them to automate other areas of their finance. Came for corporate cards, and stayed for accounting integrations. Came for reimbursements, and stayed for virtual cards. Came for a cheaper software, and stayed for the dedicated customer service. As a result, there’s a pocket for every person’s penny.
How did Volopay make this happen?
That’s an answer simpler than the one on recognizing problems and finding solutions. Volopay was able to do all of this because of the passion shared by everyone on its team. It’s not just a passion for the mission, though. Rather, it’s the vision and the sheer love for what they do.
Once a small, passionate group of 20 people, the Volopay team has now expanded into 150+ dedicated professionals across the globe. It’s more than just a payment platform connecting them. It’s the belief that budding businesses need to allow aspects like finance to be automated in order to focus on productivity, ideation, development, and market reach. No business ever took off to the skies from wasting time balancing spreadsheets all day long. Each and every person on its team knows how their lives could’ve transformed if a product like Volopay had been provided to them before.
The founding members are not alone in this. Many other employees of Volopay have such personal stories that have fueled their passion for contributing to a project that helps millions of others avoid the same hurdle. Most importantly, perhaps, it is the work culture of the Volopay team that has made it possible to create what we have. A combination of big dreams, an open mind to correct mistakes, a humane approach to networking, and emotional intelligence to solve problems.
The believers of Volopay
In March, the Volopay team gathered around a single cake. Remote employees were watching from a precariously balanced laptop in the Bangalore office’s lounge. Jittery hands, whispers and giggles, and most of all, speechlessness. The company had just announced its Series-A funding. $29M allowed it to explore how it can improve its infrastructure and provide better solutions. It was a momentous occasion celebrated with cutting the cake, some soda, and then playing some cricket as a team.
Volopay’s investors believed in them, and so do the likes of Visa – the world-renowned card provider. Unlike before, when Volopay functioned with partnerships to issue cards, Visa’s seal of approval will now allow it to issue its own cards to clients. This feat was made possible through its recent partnership with the card provider with the Visa Fintech Fast Track program. Now having the end-to-end control over its supply chain means that Volopay has complete power to decide the value, quality, and complexity.
The backing of a verifiable institution like Visa signals to the world that Volopay is a credible player. While the company has fun celebrating its successes, it’s very serious about every word and every promise it makes to its clients. Despite the complex individual legalities of different markets (all of which the company continues to tackle) having the Visa Fintech Fast Track program badge gives Volopay a powerful edge. It also opens many doors for a trusted, well-oiled machine of financial contacts and networks across the globe. The ecosystem Volopay is becoming a part of is the one it first set out to disrupt and now has a way in.
The long journey ahead
For Volopay the game has only just begun. Everything before this was like a practice round, perhaps even the preliminaries. And the company has got a long, long way to go before it wins. As its vision would have it, this is not a game that will ever end. With every turn of technology, businesses will face new problems. Volopay continues to observe new challenges and will keep striving to find new solutions. For as long as businesses will exist, so will their problems – and so will their potential to step beyond them. Thus, Volopay plans to be there to help these businesses make that leap and take flight.
