ogi_ogi

Startups die in two ways: slowly from irrelevance, or suddenly when a key customer walks out.

M2P Fintech — one of India’s most celebrated API infra startups ($100M+ raised, $900M valuation) — just lost its biggest banking partner, Unity SFB. And not during a quiet year, but right in the middle of a high-stakes pivot from payments/lending APIs to becoming a full-stack digital banking provider.

This is the nightmare scenario: • You’re burning cash to build the “next act” of the company. • Your largest client is footing a big part of that runway. • Then they leave.

The questions now: • Can you sell the “full-stack” vision when the flagship logo just vanished? • Do other banks in India see this as smoke before the fire? • Is this the point where “pivot” quietly becomes “postmortem”?

12 years ago, in a tiny garage in Vijayanagar, a few devs started building a loan management system for the unbanked. No funding, no AC, no plan B.

That system became Mifos, later adopted and matured into Apache Fineract, and is now the backbone for hundreds of fintechs and NBFCs globally.

This is the behind-the-scenes farewell note from one of the original builders who later co-founded Finflux (acquired by M2P).

A great read if you’re into: • Open-source in real-world fintech • Startup → platform → foundation evolution • Stories from outside Silicon Valley