Every successful business starts with an idea. But some begin much earlier with small experiments, everyday observations, and a willingness to solve problems that others overlook.
For Akash Agrawal and Rupesh Mor, entrepreneurship was never a sudden decision. It was shaped by years of learning, building, failing, and understanding how businesses work at the ground level. Today, the two co-founders are behind BillFree, a retail technology platform that helps offline retailers improve customer engagement and increase repeat business. But their journey began long before BillFree was created.
Both founders grew up in business-oriented families and were exposed to commerce from an early age. While many students were focused only on academics, Rupesh was already experimenting with small ventures. During his school years, he built a comic book rental library with more than 4,000 comics. Later, he started an ice candy manufacturing unit, which eventually became a family business that continues to operate today.
These early experiences taught him lessons that would stay with him throughout his career understanding customers, building loyalty, and creating value that brings people back.
After completing his engineering degree from Government Engineering College, Jabalpur, and an MBA from IIT Kanpur, Rupesh entered the world of analytics and market intelligence. Over the next decade, he worked closely with consumer data, business intelligence, and growth strategy. He played an important role in building Value Edge Research, helping scale the company from its early stages into a 100-plus member organization before it was acquired by WNS in 2016.
Akash's journey followed a different but equally entrepreneurial path. Born and raised in Gondia, Maharashtra, he completed his B.Tech from IIIT Jabalpur. During his college years, he worked on an Internet of Things (IoT) project that eventually became his first business venture. What started as a student project evolved into a surveillance solution for the Government of Madhya Pradesh.
The experience gave him firsthand exposure to product development, technology deployment, and running a business. After successfully exiting that venture in 2016, he began looking for the next opportunity.
Around the same time, both founders were observing a common challenge in India's retail sector.
Despite having strong customer relationships, most offline retailers lacked the technology needed to stay connected with customers after a purchase. Customer interactions often ended at the billing counter. There was no structured way to follow up, collect feedback, encourage repeat visits, or build long-term engagement.
For Rupesh, this realization became even more personal after an incident at a local laundry shop. After losing a paper receipt, he watched the shopkeeper spend nearly an hour searching through records to locate his order. The experience highlighted how dependent many businesses still were on manual processes.
The founders believed that technology could solve this problem without changing the personal nature of offline retail.
In 2016, they launched Billfree with a simple vision: help retailers turn every transaction into the beginning of a long-term customer relationship.
Starting from scratch was not easy.
One of their biggest challenges was convincing traditional retailers to adopt digital tools. Many business owners viewed technology as complicated, expensive, or unnecessary. Instead of pushing software features, Akash and Rupesh focused on understanding retailers' day-to-day problems and building solutions around real business outcomes.
Their approach was simple show retailers how technology could help bring customers back, improve reviews, increase repeat purchases, and strengthen customer relationships.
Over time, that approach began to work.
Today, Billfree serves more than 55,000+ clients across over 300 cities in India. The platform helps retailers automate customer communication, send digital bills, collect feedback, manage loyalty programs, improve online reputation, and engage customers through channels such as WhatsApp.
What makes the founders' story unique is that they never viewed technology as the final solution. Instead, they focused on combining technology with human understanding.
Both believe that as software becomes increasingly accessible, the real differentiator will not be features alone but the ability to create measurable business impact. This philosophy continues to guide how they build products, support customers, and grow their company.
Looking ahead, the founders see a future where offline retail becomes far more intelligent, data-driven, and customer-centric. They are now working toward expanding Billfree's AI-powered customer engagement and revenue intelligence capabilities to help retailers better understand customer behavior and improve retention.
For Akash Agrawal and Rupesh Mor, however, the journey remains rooted in the same principle that inspired them from the beginning: businesses grow when they build lasting relationships.
From a school comic library and a college technology project to a platform serving thousands of retailers across India, their story reflects what can happen when entrepreneurial curiosity meets persistence, customer understanding, and a willingness to start from scratch.
