In a career spanning 25 years, Amrish Rau has been on multiple sides of the leadership equation. He’s been a corporate leader, founder, professional CEO and angel investor. As the CEO of Pine Labs, the payments solution provider whose point of sale terminals can be seen in most Indian shops and stores, Rau says his ambition is to “make money from every transaction”.
In 2016, Citrus Pay, an online payments provider Rau co-founded, was acquired by rival PayU for $130 million in cash. It was one of the biggest acquisitions back then.

But Rau says it is also one of his biggest regrets. As a first-time founder, he made the decision to sell his company too quickly. As an entrepreneur, he says, “at the end of the day, you need your own horse and your own carriage. And you need to be able to hug it every day and saying, this is mine.”

In this wide-ranging conversation Rau touches upon a range of topics. From creating corporate cultures to “FU money” to risk-taking to the evolution of fintech, there’s interesting themes every few minutes.

If you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to [email protected]. We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them.

Full Episode Transcript

Rohin Dharmakumar

‘If Elon Musk offered you a job, would you take it?’ 

Amrish, do you recognise this question?

Amrish Rau  

Yeah, I do. I do. And to be honest… 

Rohin Dharmakumar

Where is it from?

Amrish Rau 

To be honest, this is one of the things that I’ve been thinking about right, which is…

Rohin Dharmakumar

You still haven’t answered the question. Where is it from? 

Amrish Rau

Where is it from?

Rohin Dharmakumar

You asked it on your Twitter. 

Amrish Rau  

I know, I asked it on Twitter. I asked it on Twitter. I really wanted to understand the psyche of the new employee. I think what’s really happened is, employees have been changing, and their requirements have been changing. 

So for example, something which I think about quite a bit is you want your corporate to be caring, and nice with you. But at the same time, you don’t want a mushy over the top, you know, almost an uncomfortably loving, you know, company to be around you. You also want the company to be a little bit result oriented. Trying to find the right outcome. Them becoming successful. And you as an employee becoming successful.