From Zero
to ₹566M
in 12 Months
How I designed India's fastest-growing payments automation platform from scratch — transforming manual, error-prone finance workflows into a unified operating system for Indian businesses.
Building India's Business Payments Operating System
A blank canvas. A broken process. One year to change it.
In December 2023, I joined Pazy as their Founding Product Designer. Co-founded by Pratik Chhajed and Devyanshu Shukla in Bengaluru, Pazy was born with a clear mandate: eliminate the chaos of manual vendor payments that bleeds time and money from every Indian finance team.
The vision was bold — centralize card payments, accounts payable, procurement, reimbursements, and vendor management into one unified, intelligent platform. In Pratik's words, a "gravity product" that becomes the single operating system for a company's entire financial operations.
"Our vision is to develop a 'gravity product' that flawlessly unifies all business transactions — enabling greater clarity, control, and efficiency while minimizing manual effort and errors." — Pratik Chhajed, Co-Founder & CEO, Pazy
What started as a blank Figma file became a platform now trusted by category leaders across BFSI, media, retail, and manufacturing — and backed by ₹6 crore in pre-seed funding.
The Aha Moment — And What I Found in 25+ Interviews
My first week at Pazy, I sat across from Rajesh — a finance manager at a mid-sized manufacturing company — and watched him demonstrate their monthly vendor payment workflow. What followed would define our entire product strategy.
He opened 15 different browser tabs — bank portals, Excel sheets, email threads, WhatsApp conversations — just to initiate a single payment run for 500+ vendors. What should have been a quick task had become a 20-hour weekly ordeal for his entire finance team.
That session drove me into 25+ structured user interviews across finance managers, CFOs, and AP teams. Three major pain clusters emerged, each a clear design directive.
"This is how we pay our 500+ vendors every month," he said — then opened 15 browser tabs simultaneously.Rajesh · Finance Manager · First User Interview, Week 1 at Pazy
The 20-Hour Weekly Nightmare
Finance teams burning entire days on manual payment runs — copy-pasting data, switching between portals, chasing approvals. Zero time remained for actual financial strategy or analysis.
Vendor Relationship Chaos
No centralized system to manage thousands of vendor relationships, KYC documents, and payment histories. Slow, opaque processes were actively costing businesses their vendor relationships.
Banking Integration Hell
Juggling HDFC, ICICI, SBI and other portals — each with different interfaces, file formats, and daily limits. Standardizing any payment process across banks felt impossible.
Twelve Months. Four Phases. One Platform.
Dec 2023
Deep User Research
25+ structured interviews with finance managers, CFOs, and AP teams across manufacturing, BFSI, retail, and media sectors. I mapped end-to-end payment workflows, catalogued failure points, and built a ranked pain hierarchy that would anchor every design decision that followed.
Jan 2024
Strategic Foundation & Design System
Defined Pazy's three product pillars with Pratik and Devyanshu: automation-first, banking-agnostic, and compliance-native. Built the information architecture, UX principles, and a full design system from zero. Established progressive disclosure as the core UX philosophy — show users exactly what they need, precisely when they need it.
Feb–Mar 2024
Intensive Design & MVP Launch
50+ screens designed across payment flows, vendor management, invoice processing, and analytics. Biweekly prototype → test → iterate cycles with real finance users. MVP shipped at month 3 to 5 pilot clients. The AI invoice processing engine hit 95% accuracy from launch — directly reducing client errors by 30%.
Apr–Dec 2024
Scale, Iterate & ₹566M+ Milestone
Scaled from 5 pilot clients to 150+ enterprises. Shipped weekly, validated in production, and iterated on live usage data. Added ERP integrations (Tally, Zoho Books, Oracle, Campfire) and multi-channel invoice intake via Slack, email, and WhatsApp. Clients started closing books 10× faster and recovering 7% more ITC. Watched ₹0 → ₹566M happen in real time.
From Research to Shipped Product
50+ screens designed across 12 months. Below are the actual live screens from pazy.io — each emerged directly from a validated user need identified in research.
Four Core Products. One Unified Platform.
Connected Banking & Payments
₹566M+ Processed · Hundreds of Crores MonthlyPay directly from Pazy — single, bulk, or partial payments, all from one platform. Multi-bank integration across all major Indian banks with real-time status tracking and complete audit trails for compliance.
- Bulk processing for 1000+ vendors simultaneously
- HDFC, ICICI, SBI and all major banks supported
- Real-time payment status with timestamped audit trails
- Multi-layer approval routing via Mail, Mobile App & Slack
AI-Powered Invoice Processing
95% Accuracy · 30% Fewer Errors · Zero Manual EntryInvoices submitted via Slack, email, or WhatsApp are automatically captured, extracted, matched, and queued for payment. The AI handles GST compliance and TDS calculations inline — no manual data entry ever.
- OCR extraction from Slack, email & WhatsApp — 95% accuracy
- 30% reduction in invoice processing errors (verified, MDP Coffee House CFO)
- Automated 3-way matching: PO + Invoice + Receipt
- GST & TDS compliance natively built into every workflow
Vendor Management Hub
63K+ Vendors · BFSI, Media, Retail & ManufacturingA centralized command center for all vendor relationships. Digital onboarding, KYC verification, performance tracking, and a self-service portal that keeps vendors informed and payments frictionless.
- Digital vendor onboarding with automated KYC verification
- Vendor performance tracking and relationship management
- Self-service portal: vendors check their own payment status
- Centralized document management for all vendor records
Financial Intelligence Dashboard
10× Faster Book Closing · 7% Extra ITC ReclaimedReal-time visibility into every rupee of spend. Live dashboards eliminate month-end surprises and give CFOs the clarity they need for faster, more accurate decisions — replacing spreadsheet chaos instantly.
- Real-time cash flow monitoring — see every transaction live
- 7% additional Input Tax Credit recovered on average per client
- Books closed 10× faster vs. prior manual processes
- Full compliance reporting with complete audit trail generation
From Zero to ₹566 Million — and Just Getting Started
A platform that gave
people their lives back.
Twelve months ago, Pazy was an idea on a whiteboard in Koramangala. Today it processes ₹566M+ in payments, serves 150+ enterprise clients, and manages 63,000+ vendor relationships — backed by ₹6 crore in pre-seed funding from Inuka Capital and Gemba Capital.
Finance teams close books 10× faster. They reclaim 7% more input tax credit every month. They process invoices with 30% fewer errors. But what they tell us most is simpler: they have their evenings back. Their weekends. Their strategic focus restored.
Pazy is now targeting ₹10,000 crore in annual spend under management in the next 12 months — and the product foundation I built is designed to carry that weight.
Year 1
Book Closing
Reclaimed
Clients
Accuracy
Processing Errors
"The real-time data integration reduced invoice processing errors by 30%, significantly enhancing our decision-making capabilities."CFO · MDP Coffee House · Verified Pazy Client
"You gave me my weekends back. Our finance team can finally focus on strategy instead of chasing payment statuses across five different portals every week."Finance Manager · Enterprise Manufacturing Client
- Deep user empathy — 25+ interviews surfaced pain points no survey could have captured
- Iterative shipping — MVP in 3 months, then weekly iteration driven by live production data
- Progressive disclosure reduced onboarding friction and halved support tickets post-launch
- Automation-first positioning clearly differentiated Pazy from legacy finance software
- ISO 27001 + SOC 2 certifications built enterprise trust in security-sensitive procurement cycles
- Mobile-first design — enterprise finance users demanded robust mobile access far sooner than expected
- Earlier investment in customer success programs and structured onboarding flows
- More advanced analytics in the MVP — CFOs wanted deeper spend intelligence from day one
- Better in-product discoverability for power features that went underutilized early on
