https://www.india.com/business/from-college-dropout-to-co-founder-of-rs-2463-crore-fintech-firm-all-in-a-years-work-for-bihars-misbah-ashraf-6143496/From College Dropout To Co-Founder Of Rs 2,463 Crore FinTech Firm: All In A Year

Misbah was born into a middle-class family in Bihar Sharif region of Bihar’s Nalanda district and found inspiration to overcome the family’s dire financial situation from his dad.

For most people quitting college means an early end to future avenues of success and working a low-paying job to make ends meet. But there are a select few like tech-giant Microsoft founder Bill Gates and everyone’s favourite all-time entrepreneur, the late-great Apple founder Steve Jobs, who created multi-billion dollar business empires after dropping out of college.

In today’s dose of inspiring tales, we bring you a similar story right here from our great nation. This is the awe-inspiring journey of Bihar boy Misbah Ashraf, who co-founded a 2,483 crore FinTech firm, barely four years after deciding to quit college.

‘Move fast or get knocked down’

Misbah was born into a middle-class family in Bihar Sharif region of Bihar’s Nalanda district and found inspiration to overcome the family’s dire financial situation from his dad who once gave him a valuable life lesson by telling him “those would walk slow get knocked down.”

Taking the lesson to heart, Misbah made it his life-goal to move fast and thus decided to quit college in order to start his own business. After dropping out of college in his first year, in September 2013, Misbah co-founded a social payment venture, Cibola, with some of his friends from IIT-Delhi. However, the venture could not find much success and was shuttered after a little over a year.

Early failures

Misbah attributes Cibola failure to his own miscalculations of the market; however, not one to be perturbed by failures, the young entrepreneur tried again and in the August of 2017 launched an e-commerce platform called Marsplay.

Marsplay, initially proved to be a success and quickly garnered a user base over 1 million within a short span of time. However, the company folded soon after the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak as Misbah was unable to raise more funding for the blooming startup during that uncertain period. Soon, he sold Marsplay to another e-commerce firm, Foxy and decided to work on something that would be more viable long-term.

Misbah’s ‘Jar’ of gold

Thus came the idea of ‘Jar’, a FinTech firm that helps consumers save and invest. A quick learner, Misbah used the experiences gained from his past failed ventures to make the idea behind his new venture almost foolproof. Jar was launched in May 2021 which crossed a whopping 18 million users within 18 months and has raised over $58 million in funding so far from global bigwigs like Tiger Global, Rocketship.vc and Arkam Ventures, among others.

Jar registered over 300,000 transactions on a day-to-day basis and within the first year of it’s launch, Misbah raised a massive $22.6 million at a huge valuation of $300 million dollars (Rs 2,463 crore), becoming one of the few companies that struck multi-million dollar deals when other start-ups had started folding due to global funding slowdown.

Misbah is currently designated as the Chief Product Officer (CFO) of Jar, a company he co-founded with his friend Nishchay AG. Misbah’s monumental success has gained him global acclaim as an entrepreneur and landed him a spot in the prestigious 30 Under 30 by Forbes in the Finance and Venture Capital (2023).

Prior to his entrepreneurial ventures, Misbah worked for various start-ups Pulse.qa (YC), Pursuit, Toymail (YC), and Spangle.

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