GajiGesa’s Vidit Agrawal wanted to provide workers with access to their wages as they earned it, between the traditional month-end pay cycles. This gives workers much more liquidity and protects them from predatory lenders.
Gaji Gesa
Vidit Agrawal, co-founder of Indonesia-based startup GajiGesa, knows that crazy growth is good. But staying in power is better.
“Everyone is talking about profitability these days. I hope it sticks. Building a revenue-driven or profitable business is something I’ve advocated over the years,” Agrawal told CNBC Make It.
GajiGesa is in the “earned salary approach” business, which means the firm enables workers to withdraw their earnings as they make it instead of waiting until the end of the month to be paid. Gaji means “salary” in while “gesa” means “hustle” in Bahasa Indonesia.
“Vidit is a fantastic individual in terms of always pushing the boundaries, always trying something new to help the entire ecosystem,” said Anuj Kumar Maheshwari, chief financial officer at retail distributor Kanmo Group, a client of GajiGesa.
“Our human resources department is using [GajiGesa] like [a part of] employer branding, where we can attract talent [with the perk] to be able to withdraw [portions of their salaries] before the end of the month,” said Maheshwari.
It was a “visually crazy” scene — loan sharks circling two sides of a factory in Semarang — that led Agrawal to found GajiGesa in 2020 with his wife, Martyna Malinowska, who heads engineering and product.
“On the one hand, they were trying [lend] money for workers. On the other hand, they were trying to collect money from the workers,” recounts Agrawal, who held executive positions at Uber, Stripe and Carro for nearly 8 years.
“This is such a poor experience. The workers had no choice,” Agrawal said. The average Indonesian worker earns about 2.9 million Indonesian rupiah ($192) a month and struggles to make ends meet.
A PT Restaurant Management HR Manager. Inovasi Kuliner Indonesia said they receive many calls from “screaming” loan sharks who have given money to their employees.
“The phone calls stopped two or three months after we started using GajiGesa,” said Ria Al’amin.
I’m okay with giving up 100% growth or 100x growth per year if I can build a sustainable income based business.
Vidit Agrawal
Co-founder, GajiGesa
Today, there are 42 different features – which include paying electricity bills, buying prepaid top-ups or petrol coupons – on the GajiGesa app.
GajiGesa partners with more than 300 companies and serves more than 750,000 employees.
Agrawal claims that GajiGesa is the largest earned salary access player in Indonesia. “I don’t just say that [myself]. When you talk to investors in the market, who talk to all the paid access players, they tell us we’re the biggest,” he said.
“At the same time, we’ve never overhired, so it’s a blessing that we didn’t have to lay off,” Agrawal said, as tech layoffs continue to grow in Southeast Asia.
The entrepreneur shared more about how he runs a business that lasts:
1. Sustainability first, growth second
Agrawal doesn’t believe in using incentives to drive user engagement, where “he’s seen so many businesses” doing it. If a product doesn’t work, he will shut it down.
“If I have to pay $2 to earn $1, that’s not a business,” Agrawal said.
While they give incentives when they join a new company, they don’t continue to incentivize existing users.
The key is balancing growth with sustainability.
We never had fancy dinners. But we don’t compromise on fun. We’ve had events in the office where we’ve made food. The cost is low, but we have made sure that people really enjoy themselves.
Vidit Agrawal
Co-founder, GajiGesa
“I’m OK with giving up 100% growth or 100x growth a year if I can build a sustainable revenue-based business,” Agrawal said.
He said that at the Malaysian used car market Carro, where he was the operations director, they have a principle called savings balanced with quality, which he applies to his startup today.
“We don’t want to give up quality, but we also want to be frugal as a company,” he said.
2. Trimming the extra ‘fat on the bone’
He was so frugal to the point that his employees got irritated and called him “cheap”.
“We’ve never had fancy dinners. But we don’t compromise on fun. We’ve done events in the office where we’ve catered food. The cost is low but we’ve made sure people really enjoy themselves,” Agrawal said.
He would also be shopping for a 5% discount, even though the company has the money to pay for it. “Wherever we see extra fat on the bone, we try to remove it,” he added.
“When people join GajiGesa, they’re like: why does the CEO really care about this $10 cost? Doesn’t he have better things to do? If I can eat the cheapest but still healthy foods, or I can to travel on a budget, I want my team to see that.”
I personally take a lot of pride in building someone’s career because I’ve always had great managers at Stripe who helped build my career.
Vidit Agrawal
Co-founder, GajiGesa
They were already cutting costs for the first two years of operation despite having $9 million in the bank, he said.
GajiGesa raised a seed round of $2.5 million in February 2021 and a pre-Series A of $6.6 million in November 2021. Investors include January Capital, Northstar Group, European earned wage access company Wagestream and Next Billion Ventures.
But he stressed that they spend on things that are critical to the business.
“We don’t compromise on engineering. We don’t compromise on technology tools. We don’t compromise on commissions for our top performers,” Agrawal said.
3. Care for employees
When he was at Stripe, he learned how to take care of people. “Stripe really treated you like a human being, not a number,” Agrawal said.
All full-time GajiGesa employees receive employee stock options.
“We all have to pay our bills and take care of the family. If the company does well and has a good exit in any shape or form, the team gets real value out of it,” Agrawal said.
The GajiGesa team
Gaji Gesa
