Nitya Sharma & Chaitra Chidanand — The Wall Street Duo Who Built a Digital 'Khata' from Chennai
When Wall Street Hit a Credit Wall in India
Nitya Sharma had a problem. After a decade on Wall Street — structuring, trading, and risk‑managing structured credit portfolios at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs — he returned to India with ambitious plans to start an emerging‑markets hedge fund. But before he could trade millions, he needed a simple credit card for daily expenses. The bank rejected his application. His profile was a “thin file”: no Indian credit history, no local tax returns, no permanent address proof.
Yet, the local kirana store at the corner of his Chennai neighbourhood had no such hesitation. The shopkeeper opened a khata (ledger) for him within minutes — a simple, trust‑based arrangement where he could buy groceries on credit and pay a consolidated bill at the end of the month.
“I had a great credit score in the US, but in India my profile was considered a ‘thin file’,” Nitya explained. “But I was offered ‘khaata’ by local Kirana stores, and that made me dig deep into the credit model here.”
He shared this observation with his friend and Stanford MBA graduate Chaitra Chidanand. Chaitra, who had worked with Stanford Angels in Silicon Valley, had faced a similar experience — denied a credit card due to address and tax issues, waiting eight weeks just to open a bank account. Together, they saw an opportunity: the kirana store’s khata, digitised.
“There is so much trust deficit and friction in the finance space in India. Banks lead their processes with mistrust, while every other business has the tab system. But society operates on high levels of trust,” Chaitra said.
That insight became Simpl — a fintech platform that would replace cumbersome payment processes with a single tap, no OTP, and a consolidated bill at the end of a 20‑day cycle.
From a Chennai Office to a National BNPL Network
In 2015, Nitya and Chaitra incorporated Simpl in Chennai. Their registered office was located at No 37/22, 6th Floor, Chamiers Towers on Chamiers Road, Chennai — a modest, functional space that served as both office and operations hub for the early years.
The founders, who had structured billion‑dollar portfolios in New York, now found themselves doing everything themselves — coding the first version of the platform, onboarding merchants one by one, and personally handling customer support. Convincing the first set of merchants was difficult. Why would they risk partnering with an unknown startup?
But Simpl offered clear value. For merchants, the platform helped double order frequency, increase average order volume by 35‑40%, and improve conversion rates by up to 65%. For consumers, Simpl offered a frictionless checkout — one tap, no debit on the spot, and a single bill for all purchases.
By 2019, Simpl had over 500,000 downloads and had raised $2.5 million from IA Ventures and former Visa CEO Joseph Saunders. The platform was processing millions of transactions through partner merchants like BookMyShow, BigBasket, Zomato, and Grofers, making it a challenger to traditional credit systems.
The ‘Trust Score’: AI Instead of Credit Bureaus
Simpl’s core innovation was not just the BNPL model — it was the technology behind credit assessment. Traditional lenders rely on CIBIL scores and income proof, which exclude millions of first‑time borrowers. Simpl developed a proprietary ‘trust score’ using machine learning.
The system analysed user behaviour across food, e‑commerce, and small‑ticket purchases, learning spending patterns and repayment cycles. It then assigned a trust score, which determined credit limits — without asking for any documents. If a user repaid on time, the score increased. If not, the account was closed.
The results were remarkable. Simpl achieved an average retention rate of 90‑95%, and transactional losses dropped below 0.3% when a user made more than three transactions on the platform. This combination — AI‑driven trust, frictionless checkout, and a digital khata — became the moat that set Simpl apart from competitors.
As the pandemic accelerated e‑commerce adoption, Simpl’s user base exploded, reaching over 7 million users and partnering with more than 10,000 merchants including Zomato, Dunzo, BigBasket, 1mg, Rapido, and Furlenco.
The Chennai Engineering Hub
While many fintech startups chase the Bengaluru hype, Simpl made a deliberate choice to keep its engineering and technology teams in Chennai. The city offered deep talent pools in product development and data science, with significantly lower attrition rates than competing tech hubs.
Nitya, a Tamilian with family roots in the state, was vocal about this preference. “Chennai gives us the stability and focus that Bengaluru can’t. Our engineers stay for years, not months,” he told a fintech summit in 2023. Simpl’s operations team also remained Chennai‑based, managing merchant onboarding, customer support, and compliance from the city.
This “Chennai‑first” philosophy has quietly inspired other fintech startups to consider Tamil Nadu as a serious base for building scalable technology businesses — not just services or support centres.
The Unicorn Journey and $83 Million in Funding
As Simpl scaled, the funding followed. Over six rounds, the startup raised a total of $83 million from marquee investors including Green Visor Capital, IA Ventures, and Valar Ventures (the firm co‑founded by Peter Thiel).
Key funding milestones:
Seed (2016): $2.5 million — IA Ventures, Joseph Saunders
Series A (2017): $10.2 million — Green Visor Capital
Series B (2021): $40 million — Valar Ventures, IA Ventures
At its peak valuation (2021), Simpl was valued at over $350 million, processing billions of rupees in annual transactions. The company had grown to over 500 employees, with a significant portion based in Chennai.
The Regulatory Earthquake of 2025
In September 2025, Simpl faced an unprecedented crisis. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed the fintech to immediately halt all payment operations, citing violation of the Payment and Settlement Systems (PSS) Act, 2007. The regulator alleged that Simpl was operating a payment system involving clearing and settlement without proper authorisation.
The order was devastating. Simpl, which had built its entire business around facilitating payments between merchants and consumers, was forced to shut down its core product overnight. The company laid off nearly half its workforce — about 100 employees — retaining only collections and operations staff.
For Nitya and Chaitra, it was a brutal test of resilience. From a Chennai office, they had built one of India’s most loved fintech brands. Now, they faced an existential regulatory threat that neither their Wall Street training nor venture capital could solve.
The founders responded by pivoting aggressively. Simpl moved away from direct BNPL services and began transitioning to EMI‑based credit products, complying with RBI’s licensing framework. The company also leaned on its Chennai‑based legal and compliance team, which worked around the clock to negotiate with regulators and chart a path to re‑licensing.
Leadership Philosophy: ‘Imperfect Authenticity’ and Long‑Term Trust
Nitya Sharma’s leadership philosophy is grounded in what he calls “imperfect authenticity” — the belief that technology solutions must remain grounded in real human experiences, even if they are not perfectly polished. For Simpl, this meant prioritising trust over metrics, and relationships over algorithms.
“We position ourselves not as a credit company but as a ‘khaata’,” Nitya explained. “Khaata is a model of trust and makes buying a pleasant experience. Using that concept at Simpl, we want to create the best payment experience driven by trust.”
Chaitra Chidanand, who stepped back from day‑to‑day operations in later years, continued to influence the company’s product philosophy. Her Stanford MBA and Silicon Valley network helped shape Simpl’s early merchant partnerships and user experience design.
Together, the co‑founders built a culture of frugality and accountability. Simpl’s Chennai office, even at its peak, remained functional and unpretentious — a reflection of the founders’ belief that capital should go into product and trust, not into perks.
Challenges and Critiques
Simpl’s journey has been defined by navigating intense regulatory headwinds. Critics have questioned whether BNPL models inherently bypass necessary financial safeguards, exposing vulnerable consumers to over‑indebtedness. The RBI’s 2025 action reflected these systemic concerns — not just about Simpl, but about the entire BNPL sector, which had grown rapidly without clear regulatory oversight.
Additionally, Simpl faced internal founder disputes. In 2024, Chaitra Chidanand filed an oppression and mismanagement petition against Nitya Sharma, which the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) dismissed, but not without creating public friction.
Despite these challenges, Simpl’s core user base remained loyal. The platform’s AI‑driven trust score had created genuine financial access for millions of Indians who were excluded from traditional credit — a legacy that neither regulation nor founder disputes could erase.
The Tamil Nadu Legacy
Nitya Sharma and Chaitra Chidanand chose Chennai as their headquarters not for tax breaks or ecosystem glamour, but for practical reasons: lower operational costs, loyal engineering talent, and a supportive business environment. The city gave them the stability to build a complex fintech platform without the distractions of Bengaluru’s talent wars.
Even as Simpl’s user base grew to 8 million and its merchant network to 26,000+, the company’s core engineering and compliance teams remained Chennai‑based. The city’s fintech ecosystem, often overshadowed by Bengaluru and Mumbai, quietly flourished around Simpl’s success — with former employees going on to found their own startups, creating a small but resilient fintech talent pool.
For aspiring founders in Tamil Nadu, Simpl’s story carries a powerful message: you don’t need to be in a Tier‑1 startup hub to build a national fintech platform. You need a clear problem, a technology edge, and the discipline to trust your users.
