Simplifying dining out payments

Natasha Jain — Founder of Ruplee

Out to revolutionize people’s lives by making everyday technology work for them, 27-year-old Natasha Jain, a Masters Degree Holder in Management Science Engineering from Stanford University, is the Founder of Ruplee, an avant-garde payment app designed to ease dining-out woes.

A self-raised entrepreneur and a thorough professional, Natasha earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. In her previous endeavour, Natasha commandeered operations and supply chain management of four manufacturing plants that shaped her entrepreneurial capabilities. Previous to setting up Ruplee, Natasha managed the much-successful FreshMentors initiative that she initiated in 2012. FreshMentors is an online college mentoring platform that helps students get live one-to-one video interactions in the form of thirty minute video chats.

High point in career

“When we introduced Ruplee and received our first feedback. The user mentioned that she was quite adamant to download the app as it seemed like a pretty cool way to pay for her bill compared to other apps. The innovative concept where the user could select a restaurant, dine in and pay the bill through his / her phone within a few taps was very attractive. Further, it enabled the user to make the payment without getting into any hassle for cash/card payments and got her discount on the bill as well!”

Most challenging assignment so far

“Creating an app that changes payment behaviour is very challenging. Given the large percentage of people still paying with cash, it’s difficult to create a concept that would digitize payments. Thus, you have to be forward thinking and have faith that this is going to be the next revolution in payment. You need to stay motivated by the fact that when the acceptability of the concept increases, you would be part of the reason the change happened.”

Greatest inspiration

“I come from a business family background. That has definitely helped shape my outlook towards work. However, a huge inspiration for me was the entrepreneurial peer group at Stanford. It was great to see so many people around me working on concepts that would make a global impact in the future. That has been the most appealing part to me about being an entrepreneur, trying to create a product that will impact our everyday lives.”

Most important milestone in life

“It’s the time when we did our first Ruplee transaction and the customers loved the concept. Seeing an idea come to life and getting positive feedback on it is really fulfilling.”

Women are the better halves. What does it mean?

“Women are the support system in the relationship and similarly men should also be the same given the world we live in today.”