Soon after returning to Bengaluru from his honeymoon in Dubai in 2013, Abdul Hadi Shaikh went to his preferred vendor on Commercial Street to exchange the few dirhams he had left with him. While he was at the store, his wife took a stroll, checking out the other stores in the vicinity. Just when he had finalized the exchange rate, his wife returned and told him that the money changer next door was offering a much better rate. This was an embarrassment for Shaikh, because forex markets was something he dealt with, having been head of research at Ratings Intelligence, a research intelligence firm for Islamic investors headquartered in London. “Quite deservingly I was jacked in my area of expertise, much to my wife’s amusement. But this incident left me wondering, why not create a web-based comparison platform for getting the best forex deals,” he recalls. The banks charge was more than the interbank rate, while the authorized money exchangers have small stores, untrained staff and no visible branding.
That was the beginning of Fxkart, an online aggregator of foreign exchange dealers, which started with Mushtaq Shah, the founder of Rating Intelligence. Shaikh had worked for Shah for more than seven years after passing out of college. Shah, who is also co-founding partner of hedge fund Quantmetrics Capital Management, was earlier an executive director at Goldman Sachs International. Shaikh graduated in commerce from Mahaveer Jain College in Bengaluru and joined Ratings Intelligence to start its Indian operations. “My father was wary. I could have easily secured a job at E&Y (audit firm Ernst & young), having interned there during my college days. I told my father I wanted to try out this (Rating Intelligence) option for a couple of years and see how it goes. I guess my seeds of entrepreneurship were sown during that time,” Shaikh says.
Fxkart’s services are free for consumers, but the company charges the 100 odd money changers on its platform. When consumers feed their requirement on the platform, forex dealers will offer their rates, and the consumer can choose to go with the best rate. Fxkart earns a commission on every successful transaction. The platform sees about 35 transactions of about $2.5 million since it went live in January. “When you are running your own company, there is no start time and end time. You are always engrossed in it. My wife is a doctor, and she was not keen to marry someone in her own profession as the schedules are hectic and the working hours are odd. She chose to marry me as I had a five-day work week and fixed work timings. Six months into the marriage, Fxkart started taking shape, leading to long working hours, weekend work and a whole lot of travel. Now she says I tricked her in to marry me,” Shaikh laughs.
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