Anurag Gupta and Lokanath Panda are co-founders of A Little World and Zero Mass, which complement each other without competing.

A Little World (ALW) is an acknowledged technology pioneer in enabling Financial Inclusion, Micro Banking and Micro-Payments through development of front-end devices, user-facing applications, middleware, back-end, Aadhaar biometric integration, security and cloud based services. ALW currently manages the ‘SmartChange’ NFC/RFID based small value prepaid payment for State Bank of India (SBI) in collaboration with marquee merchant partners like Mother Dairy, Safal and Amul.

Zero Mass (ZM) has 15 years of on-ground experience in running one of the largest micro-banking networks in the world, at current count exceeding over 12,500 outlets for Financial Inclusion in India. ZM was the first ever Business Correspondent in the history of Indian banking (year 2006-07).

Having run profitable operations over the last 8 years, the two companies are now looking to expand their footprint globally in collaboration with regional partners such as Banks, Telcos, FMCGs and others.

A few new products which will leverage the vast rural network created over the last 15 years, are also in the pipeline - watch this space for more news in the coming weeks.

A snapshot of operating numbers for last year are provided below