Airtel Money has 334 employees, 2.3 million agents and a $7 billion valuation. In 2012 I left the US to build the same thing in India.

It listed in London on October 14. Revenue $1.35 billion, net profit $373 million. That is $4 million of revenue per employee, and $1.1 million of profit per head after agents are paid.

Where each dollar of revenue went, per its prospectus:
39 cents to 2.3 million shop owners who take deposits and pay out cash.
2.5 cents to the 334 employees.
28 cents to shareholders.

The agents carry the cash and the customer. The company carries the brand and the rails.

I lived it. iPay was India's first cash collection network through kirana stores. Customers paid cash at the corner shop to spend it digitally, and the same rails turned those shops into assisted e-commerce points. We switched on in Hyderabad on April 15, 2013. In 48 days we had served 20,000 customers, one every 3.5 minutes. In 200 days, half a million people and Rs 15 crore had passed through 500 shops. By 2015 it was 4,500 kirana stores across 850 towns and 2.8 million customers. Then in November 2016 India pulled the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, UPI became the default, and a business built on cash friction had nothing left to stand on.

Airtel Money's 13 markets have no UPI yet. That absence is most of the $7 billion.

Agent banking is a toll bridge over a river of cash. It pays until the government builds a free bridge beside it.

Krishna Lakamsani | Serial Entrepreneur | Investor | I write at the intersection of AI, capital, and the future of the human job market,
sharing my life lessons, reflections, and honest takes from the founder-investor's seat.