Nikhil Kumar, co-founder of fintech infrastructure startup Setu, has stepped away from his day-to-day function on the firm, practically eight years after serving to set up the enterprise and 4 years after its acquisition by Pine Labs.

Kumar introduced the transfer in a LinkedIn put up on 3 June, saying it was time to depart his operational tasks after years of constructing the corporate.

“After a few years of constructing Setu, it’s time for me to step away from my on a regular basis function,” he wrote.

Reflecting on his time on the Bengaluru-based startup, Kumar described Setu as one of the crucial vital chapters of his life.

“It’s exhausting to place into phrases what Setu has meant to me. It has given me excess of I ever anticipated. It has been one of the crucial necessary chapters of my life,” he mentioned.

Based in 2018 by Kumar and Sahil Kini, Setu supplies utility programming interface (API) infrastructure for digital monetary providers, together with invoice funds, UPI transactions, KYC verification, digital signatures, financial savings and credit score merchandise.

It additionally supplies account aggregator-related providers, whereas Setu AA, operated by Agya Applied sciences, is licensed by the RBI to assist consent-based monetary knowledge sharing.

In 2024, Setu launched Sesame, which it describes as India’s first giant language mannequin designed particularly for the banking and monetary providers sector.

“We got down to construct infrastructure. Someplace alongside the way in which, an organization turned a group. Work turned a approach of trying on the world, and of doing our small half to maneuver the ecosystem ahead,” Kumar wrote.

Setu, which has raised greater than $18 million from traders together with Lightspeed, Falcon Edge and Alpha Wave International, was acquired by Pine Labs in June 2022 as a part of the funds firm’s efforts to increase its monetary infrastructure and digital funds choices.

The startup strengthened its management workforce final 12 months, appointing former Razorpay govt Prashanth Nimmagada as chief know-how officer and Vijeth Pandit as chief product officer.

Kumar, a graduate of Visvesvaraya Technological College in Karnataka, beforehand co-founded buyer suggestions platform Voyce, which was acquired by Exotel in 2015.

He didn’t disclose his subsequent plans, however mentioned he was leaving with confidence within the firm’s future and its management workforce.