A Billion Dollar Idea

We all have ideas. Ideas that can be new, different, and/or improved versions of the existing. Academic researchers develop insights from empirical literature already published and frame new hypotheses by de-limiting the assumptions. Same goes for businesses as well. New business ideas are either incremental improvements over the existing ones or attempt resolving it afresh.

On 12 October 2013, I emailed a presentation to my mentor about a peer-to-peer leading, premised on the concept of ‘chit funds’ in India. Back then, I had no idea about what ‘marketplace’ business models were. I had no reading on the emerging role of technology in the finance world. Though, I did know that technology was the sector the banks were putting most of their money into.

Next day, my mentor replied ‘legal system does not allow it.’ Post this, I did not revisit the presentation nor did I try reframing the idea differently. I did not read to decipher that proof of concept of P2P lending was already established in the western world. Back then, the P2P lending market was $3 billion in size.

I had forgotten about my presentation and moved on since then. Incidentally today, I came across a post on Linkedin stating that P2P market was a USD32 billing in size, I recalled about having worked on this. I searched my Gmail archives and could retrieve the same presentation. The idea that was raw and long forgotten.