The tale of three best friends—Anantha, Joshi and GB

The humans we’re going to talk about are three best friends who’ve known each other for a decade now. They all went to college together and are now at Setu to help drive its vision.

Anantha Kishore#

Anantha is one of our biz-dev folks and plays a dedicated part of our Payments team. It all started two years ago when he’d made up his mind to leave for the USA to re-start his career. That’s when his ex-manager from a previous organisation, convinced Anantha to join his newly formed start-up. He knew instantly to drop the idea of moving and stayed back in Bangalore to work with Nikhil. He believed Nikhil would continue to mentor and take care of him as he did back at Exotel.

Anantha likes to spend his time with family and has recently started pampering them with his cooking. He plays badminton, has a love-hate relationship with running and regularly catches up with a close-knit circle of friends from his college days.

Favourite movie: Wolf of Wall Street

Favourite video game: Rocket League

Favourite people at Setu: Sahil, Pawan, KKT, Ranjith BR

Casual flex: Taking us to 1.5 million transactions when we were not expecting it

Akshay Joshi#

When asked who else Anantha bring on board, he thought about folks he’d feel comfortable around and could build products with. Anantha immediately knew to call his dear friend Akshay Joshi—who had pushed him to be career-oriented in his initial days. Wanting to repay Joshi, Anantha shared with him Setu’s daunting vision and that was that.

Joshi is a product manager in the Payments team whose main focus lies around the BBPS (Bharat Bill Payments System) and the UPI (Unified Payments Interface) product. He loves taking photographs and has even been featured in Apple’s campaign, #shotoniPhone. He enjoys meditating and makes sure he gets in a half-hour of zen time every day.

Favourite movies: Clockwork Orange, Wild Tales and Capernaum

Favourite video game: Counterstrike

Favourite people: Saai, Kavya, Ranjith BR, Nikhil

Casual flex: Setting up the BOU for ICICI and Kotak Bank

Gandharva Bettadapur#

After convincing Joshi, the salesman in Anantha pestered him to chat up his buddy, Gandharva (GB for short, as we all know him now). At that point, GB was at an e-commerce company with no clarity of what his future looked like. Anantha spoke to him of the impact he could create at Setu and assured him of the freedom he’d get to build products from scratch.

GB started out as an engineer in the Payments team and has recently transitioned to the Data Gateway team. He brings relevant UI/UX experience to the table that was reflected in the UI wrapper built into the e-Sign product. In his free time, GB likes to unwind with a glass of chilled beer.

Favourite movie: Matrix Trilogy

Favourite video game: Rocket League

Favourite people: Ranjith BR, Ruby, Amrutha

Casual flex: Whooping everyone’s ass at Snooker during our workation

All three boys have completed two full years at Setu. Only onwards and upwards from here! 🚀

(Circa 2019)