Strategy question

If a VC gave you $100M to build a payments app for India and maximize market share in 12 months, what would be your strategy?

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What this question tests

Tests aggressive growth strategy under capital and time constraints in a competitive, UPI-dominated market.

Assess the landscape: India's payments market runs on UPI, already crowded with PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm at near-zero transaction fees.
Decide not to compete head-on for generic P2P payments, and instead target a niche with higher willingness to pay, like merchant credit tools for kirana stores.
Allocate the $100M mostly to merchant onboarding field force and targeted cashback for the chosen niche, not broad brand advertising.
Sequence the launch across a few states with dense merchant density, using capped incentives to drive first-time UPI users, then expand.
Define success as monthly transacting users with a real transaction, and merchant retention, not just downloads.

Acknowledges the UPI market's near-zero differentiation and incumbents' scale as the core challenge.
Picks a specific underserved wedge, merchant credit tools, instead of generic great-UX claims.
Ties spend to a measurable acquisition-to-retention funnel rather than a vague marketing budget.

Proposing to out-cashback incumbents on generic P2P payments, a losing strategy against PhonePe and Google Pay's scale.
Not naming a differentiated wedge at all.

How would you prevent users from being cashback-only and churning once incentives stop?
What regulatory hurdles, RBI or NPCI, would you plan for?