SLIDE ONE - OPENING (two minutes)
SLIDE ONE - OPENING (two minutes)
"Saurabh, thank you for the time today. I want to be direct about something before we begin.
I've spent the last few days studying this case - the numbers, the structure, the gaps. And what struck me most is not the problems. The problems are familiar. What struck me is something you said in our last conversation - that Razorpay is heading toward an initial public offering and the numbers need to look right.
That landed with me. Because when I thought about this case through that lens, the framing changes completely. Support is not a cost centre - it's an initial public offering readiness function. Every unresolved merchant complaint, every inconsistent service level agreement, every attrition-driven knowledge loss is a risk that shows up in due diligence, in merchant retention numbers, and in the net promoter score that investors and analysts will scrutinise. These aren't just operational problems anymore - they're risks with a public-market price tag.
That's the lens I've built this entire plan through. Not just 'how do we fix support' - but 'how do we build a support engine that's ready for public-market scrutiny while the company doubles its merchant base.'
I'll walk you through this in three areas - but I want to flag upfront: I've deliberately chosen to go deep on the three areas I believe will create the most leverage, rather than cover everything at equal depth. The rest I'm happy to go there in question and answer."
SLIDE TWO - ASSUMPTIONS (two minutes)
SLIDE TWO - ASSUMPTIONS (two minutes)
"Every strategy make or break on its assumptions. I've outlined eighteen across budget, organization alignment, team readiness, and business context. Let me highlight the three that would change my entire approach if they proved false:
First - budget alignment for in-sourcing. I'm assuming approval for eight to ten in-house hires, offset by vendor cost reduction. This is not headcount expansion - it's a reallocation. But if this is not approved, my quality strategy changes fundamentally. I would need to restructure the vendor relationship differently rather than phase them out.
Second - engineering partnership on diagnostic access. In India's payment stack, agents debugging UPI transaction failures, NACH mandate issues, or webhook delivery problems without access to traces and logs is like asking a mechanic to fix a car without opening the bonnet. Half our avoidable escalations stem from this. If engineering doesn't grant access, escalations stay at twenty-five percent and above regardless of what else I do. This is my Week One conversation.
Third - leadership support for the tier model. Moving from flat to L one, L two, L three in a team that grew from twenty-five to sixty-five in eighteen months requires change management partnership. At PayPal, I led a similar restructuring across a forty-person team. The single biggest lesson: if people feel the restructure is done to them rather than with them, you lose the people you most need to keep. HR and compensation must be partners before any announcement, not just approvers.
Assumptions are not excuses - they're the conversations I'll own in my first thirty days. If any assumption proves false, I have contingency paths, which I'm happy to walk through."