Hands-on startup incubator AngelPrime today unveiled its first company, Ezetap, a made-in-India mobile POS company. Ezetap allows feature phones, smartphones and tablets to be converted into full-fledged POS terminals by the addition of a secure, compact dongle, the Ezetap Card Reader

Ezetap was co-founded by CEO Abhijit Bose, a former Oracle and NGPAY executive, and CTO Bhaktha Kesavachar, an Intel veteran. Ezetap's chairman is Sanjay Swamy, a payments industry veteran and an AngelPrime managing partner. Swamy started AngelPrime along with serial entrepreneurs Bala Parthasarathy and Shripati Acharya.

Ezetap allows merchants of all sizes to benefit from a substantially lower-cost POS solution that integrates with their business processes and allows them to accept credit and debit card payments at the point of transaction — whether in-store, on the road or at the customer's doorstep. The system electronically captures the customer's signature, eliminating the need for paper receipts.

Ezetap said it is the only company in India to design and develop its entire hardware and software technology stack end-to-end. The system can be launched by banks in two to three weeks and by merchants in a matter of minutes.

"Ezetap is serving the burgeoning mobile point-of-service market — both in India and other emerging markets," said Bose. "Working with AngelPrime truly helped us jumpstart our foray into this complex industry, providing not just adequate startup capital, but also hands-on participation in setting product and business strategy, sales, marketing and other operational aspects." With help from AngelPrime, the Ezetap team was able to focus on bringing its product to market in a highly compressed timeframe, Bose said.

For its part, said AngelPrime, "We are delighted to bring Ezetap to the world. Our charter is to work side-by-side with great entrepreneurs and create game-changing companies from scratch in India — putting together high-quality teams and providing the initial seed capital and incubation infrastructure required. Ezetap is a prime example of the kind of companies and entrepreneurs we work with."

Professor S. Sadagopan, an industry expert and Head of IIIT Bangalore said that with a large number of debit cards and mobile phones already in consumer hands, the addition of a simple device like the Ezetap Mobile POS can be a catalyst in a ramp up of electronic payments throughout India.

For more stories like this, visit the mobile POS research center.