S3 | Episode 8 | Anish Kapoor of AccessPay: Building the UK’s Fastest Growing FinTech Outside of London

Hello and welcome to a new episode of The Start-Up Diaries. In this episode, we sit down with Anish Kapoor, who's the CEO of AccessPay, a fintech which is disrupting the way businesses communicate and interact with their banks. And it's also one of the fastest growing fintechs outside of London. In this episode, Anish talks us through his career journey that's led him to AccessPay.

And now he's actually retired, not once, but twice after being inspired by multiple growing tech businesses, solving some of the most prominent problems in tech and he talks us through the unique culture that he's developed within access pay and how the decision to give everyone shares is impacted upon the business as well as the future of the FinTech market in Manchester, the Northwest and the UK.

It's a great episode. From a very inspiring leader. Hope you enjoy. Welcome Hanish. Hey Chris, how you doing? All good. Thank you. Well, thanks for joining us today. Do you want to start off by telling us a bit about yourself and a bit about AccessPay as well? Yeah, sure. So so basically I started out life as a software developer actually came to Manchester to sort of do my degree here and then stayed ended up becoming an accountant for a reason that I, I I still.

Well, actually it's because they offered me a job to be frank. And I needed the money at the end of my university course. So became an accountant and then from there ended up really jumping into starting software businesses. So I got qualified as an accountant, pretty much left the day that I got qualified and started a software business with some friends of mine.

And this was back in the, in the mid nineties. And I've been. You know, really in, in you know, starting software businesses and, and, and in the world of kind of venture capital backed businesses ever since then and and so right now obviously I'm at AccessPay and have, have been there for the last five and a bit years.

And you know, and AccessPay is, is, is. Really super interesting. So so really the big vision, you know, that we have an access pay is, is to change the way that the banking works for you know, for businesses. So in our personal lives, we've probably all seen that, you know, the way in which we bank has changed dramatically in the last, particularly the last five years, right?

You know, doing so much more on your mobile now, you've got, you know, all the data that shows you what you spent and where, how much you spent at Starbucks. And you know, and, and now the, the, you know, the, the, in your personal life, The, the banking technology tries to help you save and achieve your goals and do all those sorts of things, you know, so it's kind of intelligent, right?

But in the world of business, and I'm talking about not sort of small businesses, but businesses that are maybe, you know, 10 million turnover up to, you know, multi billion pound turnover, those businesses, their banking experience hasn't changed in the last 20 years. Right. Right. So, so they're still literally logging on to, I mean, I'm showing my age now, but you know, for those people that are listening, you can remember the days when you would have to log on to your online banking to see, well, how much money you had and then to, you know, to move money around.

That is what businesses have to do day in, day out. And you can imagine for them, this is a huge problem because they've got Lots and lots of people that need to do this. So it's not, you know, that interesting a job for someone to do. It's usually risky because they've got access to your bank account, which means got access to all your money.

And and you know, all that data is tied up in, you know, spreadsheets on people's desktops and what have you. And and so really our vision is to say, well, come on 21st century, right? You know, Banking for those corporates and large enterprise, it should be the same as the experience that we have as individuals.

And so that, that's the problem that we're solving. That's our vision. That's what we're trying to do. Perfect. Excellent. So do you want to give us a bit about the story of, I guess, how you, how you became the founder and CEO of AccessPay? So it's interesting. So I like I said, I, I sort of got started in my sort of business career, you know, in sort of sort of the early nineties and was very, was lucky enough to be involved in, in the very early days of the internet.

You know, this is when it was all dial up modems and you had to pay per minute for every, every minute you were online. And We some, some myself and some friends, we, we happened to be in the right place at the right time just as the internet was starting to take off in, in the UK and across Europe.

And what, what we took a bet on was that the internet was going to take off. Right. Which sounds really stupid now. Right. You're looking at, yeah, but back in the early nineties, it was no, you know, It was still a really poor experience and it was by no means certain that the internet was, was actually going to be a thing.

Right. But the big bet we took was to go, was to say, you know what, the internet's going to take off and someone's going to need to build the infrastructure to make it work. Right. So it's a bit like saying, it's a bit like taking a bet that air travel, you know, sort of a hundred years ago saying air travel is going to take off.

And so you need airports, right? So, so in effect we built the equivalent of Manchester airport, Heathrow airport, Charles de Gaulle airport, Frankfurt airport, et cetera, Schiphol airport. But we did all of that for the internet in Europe. And so even today, 80 percent of all internet traffic in Europe goes through Telecity, which was the company that we started.

And and yeah, like I said, so we started that business and started the four of us, you know, literally building our own. Furniture, you know, desks, chairs in, in, in, in a tiny little office. And about two and a half years later, there were 700 people in 12 countries. And, and we had just gone through an IPO.

So it was a pretty crazy ride. And I think at that point I ended up as the, I think it was the youngest FTSE T50 main board director or something like that. It was, I was, I was like 27 or 26 or something crazy. So And so a couple of years post flotation, I, I, I decided, well, that this, you know, the business, the business had changed, right.

It was, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people. I had a team of a hundred people spent most of my time trudging around the city, talking to investors and people like that. And it just wasn't really fun anymore. You know, the startup thing had gone. The business was, was kind of got beyond that. So I I retired and you know, Went off to kind of live in the country for a little bit.

Got married, had a kid and all that kind of good stuff. And then 10 years later I'd kind of got a bit bored of sitting around doing nothing. And then, and then started another business, which was actually in the very early days of web and video and audio conferencing on the web. So this is pre Skype, pre Zoom.

And again, the big bet we took was that. People would do web and video conferencing using the internet and they would, you know, Some good bets here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was at the time, I mean, there's kind of a theme to this, right, which is that you, you kind of, you kind of have this thesis on what you think is going to happen and go, actually, this could be huge.

And then you kind of go all in. So, so jumped into that business and that eventually got sold about three, four years later to I think it was the UK's largest conference calling company, which then got bought by the world's largest conference calling company. So all of that tech now powers the world's largest conference calling companies, you know, with all of its web and video, et cetera, conferencing.

So then retired again. And and that's really how I kind of came across access pay in the sense that The business was, you know was already had already been founded and it had raised some money and had got some early traction and, and really the, the, the founder was looking for someone to, to help, you know, I suppose, help him if you like, in terms of, you know, growing and scaling that business.

And he was in Manchester and I was in Manchester and actually got introduced through a a shared contact and I still remember the call, you know, someone phoned me up and said, I, was a friend of my phone and said, Oh, I've got a chap here who says that he's a FinTech in Manchester with, with Silicon Valley investment.

I was like, no, I don't, I don't think that exists. I mean, he's got to be winding you up and lo and behold, it was true, you know, there it was. So, so, and and, you know, met, met the, the founder and you know, when he explained the, issue. It was like, this is, this is a huge, this is a huge problem, right?

Because, you know, I'm, I'm an, I'm an accountant. I've been a CFO. I've run finance teams, you know, and I, I didn't know that, you know, and I've, I've spent millions of pounds installing BDRP systems like Oracle and all that kind of stuff. And if someone had told me spending millions of pounds, and by the way, you do know this thing doesn't actually connect to your banks, right?

You've got human beings, taking that data and manually making payments or manually updating cash. I would have said, what am I spending billions of pounds for, right? Cause I'm spending it, I spend that money because I'm on control. I'm on the data and all that. So it was, it was like a revelation. I was like, Oh my God, you know, is this, it's true.

And then I phoned up some friends of mine who were CFOs and said, do you know that you're, Systems don't actually connect to your banks. They're like, what do you mean? And then they'd get to put the phone down. They'd go off and go, Oh my God, you're right. I've just gone off and walked into the office and they've just, what?

Yeah, I can't believe it. Yeah. I've got to fix this. And at that point I thought. There's something, this is, this is, this is, this is huge. Cause this isn't, this isn't just a couple of businesses. It's like every company on the planet has this problem. Right. Yeah. So so again, it was like, wow, there's something huge here.

And actually we've, we've got to go make it happen. So, so I joined. Initially as an advisor, you know, and I work with the founder he then decided that you know, he wanted to go and do some other things. And again, that's totally fine. You know, that's and you know, and, and it was all very amicable.

You know, it wasn't, it wasn't a, it wasn't a, you know, we didn't fall out or anything like that. So it sort of ended up that I, I sort of bought him out and and then in essence, we almost kind of had to, you know, re reboot or refound the company because his brother was a CTO, right. And and his brother was in India.

So all the, all the dev team was in India. So there was very little of the company that was actually in the UK at the time. There's maybe like three or four people. So so really, even though the company is 10 years old, it's kind of, So actually it's kind of probably only five years old really because it was maybe only five and a bit years ago once sort of bought him out and then kind of, we had to kind of reach a reboot and kind of go, right, well, we need to rebuild all the tech and sort of, you know, build a whole team up from scratch again in the UK.

And and that's really what we did. So it's a very long winded answer to your question. But that, that is, that is, that is, that is how and why I'm here. Well, the main thing I've learned now is you're not very good at retiring. No, no, I'm, I'm appallingly bad at it. And but, but yeah, I mean, I, I think that it's like everything else, you know, when you see, when you can kind of see something you go, Oh, wow.

You know, this, this is, it's just huge. Right. Because I remember, you know, looking back to sort of. You know, the previous businesses I've been involved in and actually, and, you know, and I've been involved in lots more, but actually I've just picked out the ones that are probably the most pertinent, but when you're able to, to build something and that something is kind of industry defining or you know, or, or, or the thing that kind of supports the change in the whole industry, that's kind of like a once in a lifetime thing.

Right. So it's, it's, so I, I feel incredibly lucky that I've been able to do it multiple, you know, a couple of times. Yeah. And. You know, these things don't come around very often. So so, so I remember at the time, you know, when I was umming and ahhing about whether to, to get, you know, get back involved full time as it were you know, my wife actually sort of said to me, she said, look, you keep umming and ahhing about this.

You clearly, you clearly, clearly really passionately believe that this should be done right. So why don't you just do it? Yeah. And I was like, yeah, you're right. So she always says that all, you know, all the major decisions, she's always like, trust what I tell you, it always works. It's a good, it's a good way to go.

It's good advice. So I guess diving into Access Pay then, how would you kind of describe the culture within the business and the types of people that fit that culture? So I, I would say, you know, we've, we've very intentionally, Try to build a culture that's, that's kind of really, really open, really, really inclusive.

And it's really all about opportunity. So I, you know, one of the things that, you know, I've been impacted within in kind of in my career is, is where people make assumptions about, you know, your ability to do something or how, how far you can progress in your career because of maybe your background or, or maybe experience or whatever.

Right. You know, for example, prime example, you know, when when we sort of IPO telecity, you know, the the investment bankers were kind of like, well, you can't be the CFO because you're only like 26, 27. Right. So I moved into a, I then became corporate development director and we brought in a CFO.

But most of the time, you know, he literally just landed in the business. Right. And it's like, so I knew more than he did. And I was suddenly going, well, this makes no sense. Right. And and so one of the things I absolutely wanted to make sure with access pay is that it is absolutely about, you know, giving people an opportunity.

So it doesn't matter where you're from, what your background is, what convoluted path your life has taken will give you an opportunity, right? And it's up to you what you do with the opportunity, right? But we'll give you the opportunity. Because what. What I always find actually is that it is those people that have had a convoluted path through life.

You've had to fight for, for, for everything. You know, they're the kind of people that we want in the business. Right. And, and they're the people that actually have driven our business forward. And and it works both ways, right? You know, we, we, we back them, you know, we, we believe in them and, and, and, and they, they do amazing things.

Right. And so. You know, when I look back at everything we've accomplished in the business or the business has accomplished, I'm really proud of what those people have accomplished. Yeah. Because they're the ones that have done all the work. I mean, I, I don't, yeah, I can code, but they don't let me code anymore.

So and so it is, it is, it is down to the, it is down to the people. Yeah. And so so yeah, so if it gives you a sense of, of the type of ethos and values, if you like, that drive how we think. Well, one of the things that you've done, it's quite unique. And you said it's about the people, right? You give everyone access to, you know, having shares in the business as well.

And giving them an opportunity to be part of it, regardless of how senior they are. Can you tell us a bit about the decision behind that, implementing that that, that initiative and what effects it's had as well? Yeah. So again, it goes back to this this ethos of of trying to give everyone the opportunity.

So you know, in a venture capital backed business, you're clearly trying to grow the business and you are trying to grow the equity value of the business. Right. And and actually I, I'm a real big believer. So, and again, I, I've seen this in the past and I've been bitten by it in the past. Where VCs would, would or, or where the VCs would very much say, right, let's try and keep all that to ourselves, you know, and, and I think that's fundamentally wrong.

I think apps, you know, it is, it is the people in the business that build the business and, and they should reap the rewards of that. So, so I think it's super important that that everyone in the business has a stake And that, you know, they will get rewarded. So I always say to our VCs, I'm like, look, you will all do a right out of this, that's kind of not the issue, right?

But what my focus is, I want the people in the business to do a two or right out of this, you know, and I want that both financially, but I also want it in the sense of, I want them to develop their careers and I want them to, you know, develop as people. So when they go on to their next job, you know, they walk through the door and someone says, Oh, you work to access pay.

You must be a good person, you know, a good, good at what you do, a good person, the type of person that I would want to hire. Right. And so it's about trying to set people up for life, if you see what I mean. So that, that's the, that's the thought process behind why we do it. I love that. I love that. I think it obviously gets people hopefully more bought in and seeing more of a purpose to their role, hopefully seeing not necessarily the end product, but there's, there's something that they're, they're putting in, they'll hopefully get out of.

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, part of that's financial, you know, share options and all of this stuff. But, but the other, the other big part of it and that, that we, we now focus on a lot is, is trying to work with, Everyone in the business is going, well, how, how do we develop you? You know, what is it that you're, you know, what are your needs and what are your goals over the next couple of years?

And how can we help you achieve those? Right. Perfect. No, that's great. It's quite unique as well in the, in the market at the moment for, for opportunities for someone to, to get such access as well. I guess one of the big questions for me is where do you see the future of fintech going? You know, we're sat here in Manchester, so particularly from a Northwest Mancunian point of view.

And where do you also see access space sitting within that? Yeah, so it's, it's interesting. So I mean, fintech is It's kind of interesting. So if I look back over the last five, six years, what we've seen is a, is a big shift, I think, in terms of five, six years ago, there was very much this mindset of, you know, FinTech is there to kind of disrupt the banks.

If you see what I mean, right. And, and there's, you know, and we, we never actually thought that. So we, we always took a different path, right. And our path was always. Yeah, but doesn't make a lot more sense to work with the banks, right? Because they've got, you know, this, the brand and millions of customers and it would actually make a lot more sense to work with them to help them deliver better services to, to their customers.

Right. But at the time we're applying a bit of a loan thorough six years ago, to be honest, I think, I think most FinTechs were trying to disrupt the banks and most banks view FinTechs as disruptors. I think that's, that's, what's really changed. So I think. What we're seeing now is a different mindset where I think more FinTechs are realizing actually what they're better off doing is, is trying to take, you know, bits of what a bank does and make it better, right?

And then work with the banks to say, how can we, how can we help you, you know, make it better? Kind of do this and distribute it. And so that for me is the future is, is that more kind of cooperative approach between banks and FinTech. So you'll see now, you know, banks are FinTech incubators and they're investing more in FinTechs and they're doing a lot more to reach out to them.

And which I think is a, is a good thing. So that's been a, that's a huge, huge mindset, mindset shift, you know, amongst both FinTechs and banks. And what does that mean for us in Manchester? Well, actually. London gets talked about a lot. But we got to remember is that, okay, most bank HQs are in London, but most of the, you know, kind of back office functions are not in London.

In fact, most of them are actually in and around Manchester. Yeah. So, so, so I think, you know What we have the potential for here, you know, within Manchester is is, or the Manchester region I say, which obviously stretches way beyond just Central Manchester. But you know, you've got this huge opportunity for people to, to innovate around kind of all the various elements of, of, of kind of, you know middle office, back office processing for banks.

Because all the people that you need to work with are here, right? They're all sat right here, right? And yeah, so, so I think that's the, that's a huge opportunity a huge opportunity for, you know, for Manchester. Where do you think AccessPay sits within that then? How do you think it's going to be a part of the AnkiCov system?

Yeah, so one of the things that we are so we really see ourselves as a bit of an enabler. So we've obviously been at this, you know, like I say, 10 years now, right? So and And through that we've built up a lot of relationships with, you know, some of the world's biggest banks. And, and, you know, we've got about a thousand, you know, corporate customers as well, you know, some, some large enterprise customers within that.

So, and those banks trust us and, and our technology, you know, I mean, given everything, you know, our big vision I talked about, you know, is us You know, kind of transforming the way corporate banking works. But so imagine, imagine a world for corporate banking where you know, it is using data to kind of automatically surface up to me, Oh, actually, here's a product or service that might be useful to you now, now that product or service might be a short term loan facility.

It might be a faster or better way to send money to my supplier overseas. Right. But those things don't, you know, may or may not be the products from the bank. It, you know, they may, may be products from third parties, right? And so we see ourselves as as, as being an enabler to actually allow some of these, these fintech companies to both work with banks and get access to those end corporate customers.

Because we, we kind of sit in this great position where we're kind of, you know, sat in, sat in the middle there. And we can move faster than a bank can. And we also understand, you know, that the end customer problem in a way that a lot of banks, you know, aren't able to engage their customers in that same way.

So so yeah, we, you know, we see this big opportunity for us to kind of come to this platform. It kind of sits in the middle. One of the things as well I'd like to dive into, obviously we're talking a bit about the Northwest and Manchester. It's got obviously a lot of talented people, probably not enough talented people in the current market.

But a lot of them, you know, FinTech's really growing up here, but there's still a lot of people without that exposure, that experience. Like people down South, it's more prominent isn't it, having FinTechs down there, but the system, the ecosystem here is growing. But how do you identify then the right people to join AccessPay or FinTech business if they lack that previous experience?

Yeah, so we so in fact, you know, no previous experience is necessary actually. So this is the thing is that we, we, we've invested, you know, we've invested very heavily in training, you know, and actually we train people on, on, on all things kind of, you know, FinTech related and finance and banking related.

For us, it's more important that it's the right type of person. You know, everything I talked about before, you know, the right type of person is more important than, than someone with a, you know, necessarily a banking background. So again, we see it as part of, you know, our vision, our mission. is to train people, train the next generation of, of kind of FinTech entrepreneurs.

Right. So we want them to come in and learn they'll help us grow as a business. And then eventually, you know, fast forward into the future, they might go, okay, well, I'm going to go and do my own thing. Now. I understand how this market works and where the gaps are and where to fit in and whatever. And and if that's the case, great, you know, we'll help.

Right. It's like, that's, that's the, that's the point. You got to kind of think about, you got to think a bit bigger than just, you know, we're trying to do our little thing. We're not, we're trying to, we're trying to help create this ecosystem. Yeah. I'll tell you what, from my point of view, I'd love you to create the next generation of disruptive fintechs or, you know, enabling fintechs.

That would be absolutely amazing, especially up here in the great city of Manchester. A great question to be, to ask them would be, you know, what would you say your biggest challenge has been so far then within the business? It is I think for us, it's about figuring out how we maintain the culture of the business as we grow, you know, so we're about 160 people now and and yeah, we've, we've had, we've had a few goes at this.

So I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying we've got it right first time. We haven't, you know, we've, we've had to. kind of feel our way through it a little bit. And I think now we've, we've, we've kind of really we've got a lot more of it figured out. Right. So and and I think we're, we're much better now being able to, you know, bring the right kinds of people into the business and actually give them the support and training they need.

But that it figuring that out has taken time and figuring out how we do it and the processes around it and, How we best support people and, and the investment that we need to make. Actually. So we've made big investments in, in the business and, and, you know things like our HR teams and training teams, everything else which, you know, these aren't necessarily kind of revenue generating investments, right?

So you've got to, you've got to really. buy into doing something a bit bigger here to go, right, we're going to do this. We're going to do it for a reason. And so yeah, so I think that that was definitely been our biggest challenge, but one that touch wood, we are, we are, we are overcoming. Oh, great.

I mean, that's a really relevant one for a lot of businesses, I guess, to go through that. How do you kind of grow, scale and maintain that same type of culture? I think one, one final question that we always like to ask is it's really about advice. Obviously, you seemingly have managed to build some incredible businesses.

But have you got any advice that someone who's maybe looking, maybe taking the leap into starting their own business, starting, you know, going for themselves or you know, joining a startup as well, either or really? Yeah. So the, the, the one thing we always, We always say to people who are joining us is is, you know, the startup world is, is a, is a, is a tough world, right?

It's, there's a lot of ups and downs, sometimes we're in the same day, sometimes we're in the same hour, right? The, the, the big benefits are you have this amazing opportunity. It's almost make of it what you will, right? But, but you have to, you have to grab that with both hands and you have to drive it, right?

So, so but if, if you're able to do that and you have that kind of mentality, then, then you can absolutely shine. And the other big thing is you've got to realize that there will be lots of ups and downs, so you have to have that resilience. And again, comes back to my earlier point about actually people that have maybe had a few knocks in life.

Actually, some, they're better suited to be frank to the world of startup, because, because it is very up and down and you've got to be able to take the knocks and get back up again. And so it's a really hard thing. You know, I always say to everyone, I'm like, look, it's, it is hard. It's really rewarding.

Don't be wrong. So like I would. I can't do anything else now. I just love it. You know what I mean? So you're probably henceforth, keep retiring and then coming back into it. It's like a, it is a bit like a drug one. You do it and just get so used to it and you love it because it's so energizing. But it is, it is, it is, you know, it is draining.

You are up and down. So, so resilience, but you know, grab the opportunity with both hands, make of it, make of it what you will. But if you do that, then it'll be really rewarding. Perfect, I love that. That's a great way to wrap it up there. Spawn. So, Anish, really appreciate you joining us today. Thanks for all that, all that detail.

And, and talking through what you've not just built with AccessPay, but historically as well. So thanks for that. It's been great to have you on the show. Thank you, Chris. Pleasure. Awesome. Thanks a lot.