Akash Sinha

About

For Akash Sinha, the journey to co-founding Cashfree Payments wasn’t born in a boardroom—it began in college. From tinkering with early ventures as a student to absorbing the rigour of Amazon’s scale and systems, Sinha’s entrepreneurial instincts were sharpened early. Sinha and Reeju Datta launched Cashfree Payments in 2015 to simplify how internet-first businesses handled financial workflows. Today, the platform processes payments, verifications, and cross-border transactions for large clients such as IRCTC and Zomato, and supports more than 800,000 businesses. Its products, such as Secure ID, handle over 100 million verifications monthly. “We’re not just selling software—we’re co-building with our customers,” says Sinha. The company, valued at $700 million, reported a loss of ₹135 crore on revenue of ₹644 crore in FY24. But Sinha calls it a strategic pause. The company plans to return to profitability this year through mergers and acquisitions, along with global expansion starting with the U.A.E. “The next five years will be about AI-native payments,” he adds.