Razorpay CEO got his ‘first suit snitched’ SOON after a meet with Sam Altman – Here’s why | Company Business News
Online payment gateway platform Razorpay’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Harshil Mathur, in an interview with Mint, said that Big Tech artificial intelligence firm OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman taught him a lesson on how to crack deals with bankers.
Sam Altman told the executive to dress up the part when meeting with bankers so that they would have a good, well-crafted image before talking about any deals. Altman told Mathur to dress up, wear suits, and look like bankers before interacting with them.
“If the problem is you look young, why don’t you try looking old? Why are you going around in T-shirts? You should wear a suit, you should dress up. You should look like bankers if you want to interact with bankers,” Mathur told Mint, highlighting how this perspective shifted his mindset.
This interaction with Altman was at the Y Combinator (YC) which is one of the biggest startup incubators and accelerators based out of Silicon Valley, United States.
Soon after the meeting, Mathur and his co-founder decided to get his first suit stitched before going to meet banks formally. This piece of advice seems to have worked for Mathur and his firm Razorpay, landing in a partnership with the largest private sector bank in India, HDFC Bank.
Razorpay’s Origin
Harshil Mathur and his co-founder Shashank Kumar, both friends from IIT Roorkee, decided around the year 2013 to start remotely building Razorpay in their spare time while working at their day jobs.
Mathur studied for his degree in mechanical engineering, while Kumar was doing computer science. Later on, while working on Razorpay, their primary day jobs were in Dubai and the United States.
Mathur was working for an oilfield services company, Schlumberger in Dubai, which backs the technology and services needs of clients in the the oil and gas sector. During the same time, Shashank Kumar was working for the big tech firm Microsoft in the United States.
As of 2021, Razorpay is valued at $7.5 billion after its Series F funding round.
