MC Interview: We played a good game, we have no regrets, Co-founder Lizzie Chapman after resigning as ZestMoney CEO

If there's one thing that marathoners fear, it’s the acronym DNF, which stands for Did Not Finish. While some marathoners are devastated when they can’t complete the race, others approach it with a calm mindset, aiming to start afresh and try again.

Lizzie Chapman, co-founder and former CEO of ZestMoney, will likely relate to this. Chapman, an avid runner who has participated in marathons around the world, found herself in a similar situation as she and her fellow founders stepped down from their operational roles in the startup earlier this week, earning themselves the Did Not Finish tag.

Founders stepping aside to allow professionals to run the show is an unusual move in India’s startup ecosystem, which is in the grips of a funding winter as investors turn cautious in an increasingly precarious macro environment.

However, when you chat with Chapman about the past few months, which have been particularly challenging for ZestMoney, once a well-funded startup in the lending sector with the potential to become a unicorn, there is a sense of equanimity.

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‘Last few weeks have been dramatic. We are still a bit shocked’: Zest’s Lizzie Chapman | Mint

In November, two of India’s most popular fintechs PhonePe and ZestMoney entered acquisition talks soon after the Reserve Bank of India’s digital lending guidelines came into effect. 

PhonePe was keen on acquiring the ZestMoney, the popular digital lending platform which also has its own non-banking finance company (NBFC), for somewhere about $200 million to $300 million. After months of due diligence, which saw Walmart-owned PhonePe giving $18 million in debt to ZestMoney, everything changed dramatically for the Bengaluru-based digital lender. 

The acquisition talks fell through. All three founders of ZestMoney--Lizzie Chapman, Priya Sharma, and Ashish Anantharaman--have resigned from the company. 

PhonePe now gets a copy of the technology IP (intellectual property) of ZestMoney’s loan servicing platform and around 130 of its employees by waiving off the debt and paying additional $8 million (basically $26 million in total). And, lastly the new leadership team has been announced with Abhishek Sharma (SVP-growth), Mandar Satpute (chief banking officer), and Mohit Chhajer (vice president-finance) taking charge of day-to-day operations at ZestMoney.

In an exclusive conversation with Mint, Lizzie Chapman and Mandar Satpute talk about the company’s future. Edited Excerpts:

Lizzie: Everybody is like what is going on but this is not a very unique situation. We do have imagined eventually this is how it will happen. Eight years is a long time and it is very normal in corporate and startup world outside India to bring in professionals and management when you scale. It’s not such a big deal. Obviously, we got a bit surprised with the media reaction, but I do get it.

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