From capital markets and insurance to digital banking and wealth management, financial services have undergone significant transformation through new technologies. India’s adoption rate for fintech-based products stands at 59%, which is the second-highest worldwide. Fintech has been a dominant force in India; it has redefined digital payments, lending, and investments.
India’s fintech segment has expanded by leaps and bounds, and the data around this sector points to a strong growth potential going forward. One of the most prominent fintech startups in India is GoalTeller,a financial planning startup thatallows users to build custom financial plan.
Read on to know more aboutGoalTeller’s Success Story,Business Model, Products, Revenue Model and more.
GoalTeller is a financial planning platform that lets users build financial plans. The result of cutting edge technology that guides the users at every step of their journey, GoalTeller simplifies the process of investment planning. The company is currently refining its platform for rolling out enhanced features. GoalTeller operates in the B2C space and works on a mobile-first approach.
Note: The team at GoalTeller is still working on the product as of March 2021. Interested individuals can register for the product’s beta version through the company’s website.
The country’s adoption rate for fintech products stands at 59%, the second-highest pace worldwide, and significantly higher than the global average of 33%, according to an analysis by DataLabs (Source: Inc42).
GoalTeller | How it Works
GoalTeller – Founder
Vivek Banka and Udit Garg founded GoalTeller.
GoalTeller Founder | Vivek Banka
Vivek has a B.Com (Hons) from St. Xaviers School. He was the Senior Vice President at IIFL Wealth Management Ltd. for six years. In a career spanning over two decades and across financial services firms, Vivek has seen it all. His last venture Altiore Capital was acquired by IIFL Wealth in November 2018. Altiore Capital had a proprietary net worth management platform that focused on analytics and data visualization. Vivek is an avid tennis player, loves to read, and plays online video games in his spare time.
Udit Garg is the founding member and Senior Product Analyst at GoalTeller. He has completed Chartered Accountancy, Chartered Financial Analyst (level 2), and B.Com (Hons) from Hansraj College. After spending 5 years in EY in the Direct Taxation Department, Udit began anew with GoalTeller. Apart from work, he generally spends time reading, gaming, and stock trading.
The founding team was gathered through a combination of Udit’s social circle and online hiring portals. The novel idea, the opportunity to join the founding team of an exciting startup, and equity in the business convinced many to become part of the GoalTeller team. The individuals at GoalTeller come from diverse backgrounds: technology, finance, taxation, analytics, and design.
GoalTeller – Name, Logo, and Tagline
GoalTeller Logo
People are devoid of guidance on what their financial and life goals should be, and a lot of their assumptions around these goals are misplaced. The name “GoalTeller” was chosen because the platform would act as a coach and guide to users by helping them create and modify their financial planning strategies and goals.
GoalTeller’s vision is to ensure that its users have access to an automated financial plan which considers all possible aspects of their finances, taxation, cash flows, goals, and emotional intelligence.
GoalTeller – Target Market Size
GoalTeller looks forward to a market size of around 10 million individuals. The figure has been calculated by considering:
A subset of individuals filing taxes in India.
Salaried individuals in the mass affluent segment.
The financial planning industry in India today is largely dominated by traditional wealth management companies, banks, and a few fintech players. Most of these institutions focus on execution rather than planning and advisory. Moreover, the significant presence of a human element in this process could create biases that result in inefficiencies in the advice/financial plan.
The team at GoalTeller believes that unprecedented technological advances are to occur in the next five years; hence, the best approach is a hybrid financial planning solution that combines the power of technology and human instinct.
GoalTeller – Product
GoalTeller | Platform
The process on GoalTeller’s platform begins with the user answering a set of questions, for instance, about oneself, one’s family, investments, expenses, income, and specific goals. Based on the aforesaid variables, the platform allows the user to simulate various situations, especially if some goals seem hard to fulfill. GoalTeller also suggests potentially optimal solutions while considering various aspects such as taxes, cash flows, etc.
GoalTeller shall function on a freemium model wherein users will have access to certain features at no cost. The comprehensive and much more powerful offering will be available for an annual fee.
GoalTeller – Startup Launch
Having seen the industry for over two decades, the founders of GoalTeller agreed in unison that human biases were to be eradicated in case of financial planning. It was a problem statement that desperately needed attention. But the prominent fintech players in India were busy creating execution platforms and weren’t paying attention to this issue. GoalTeller was conceived as a solution to the above-mentioned pain point.
Speaking to a few friends, colleagues, and previous clients, Udit and Vivek observed that there was immense excitement for a platform that would enable every stratum of society to develop meticulous financial plans with the guidance of technology. A financial strategy that considered all possible aspects of life and was developed after simulating various real-life scenarios would be of immense benefit.
One of the biggest challenges at GoalTeller was to stitch together a team that shared the same passion and zeal towards the vision of the organization. Thankfully, the network and patience incorporated by the founders helped them build a team that is enviable in terms of experience and expertise.
The GoalTeller team is targeting web traffic of around 0.5–1 million unique visitors on its website by December 2021. It intends to convert at least 5,000 visitors as paid subscribers.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Sqrrl.
Today, in contrast to savings, the internet offers various unprecedented methods to spend money. One can easily see that spending have become increasingly easier and savings has become gradually difficult. To bridge this huge chasm between saving and spending patterns, Sanjeev and Samant decided to tap a new market – the millennials & GenZs , by launching Sqrrl.
Sqrrl is a wealth management platform founded by Samant Sikka (Chief Dreamer), Sanjeev Sharma and Dhananjay Singh. The Sqrrl team works to simplify personal finance for millions of young Indians. Sqrrl’s mission is to impact the lives of 3 million young Indians by helping them save, invest and prosper by 2021!
StartupTalky interviewed Mr. Samant Sikka (Founder & Chief Dreamer, Sqrrl) to know about the Sqrrl Success Story along with getting a glance on How Sqrrl started, Sqrrl Funding, Business model, growth, founders, products, future plans & more…
Sqrrl is a platform aimed at helping young Indians save their earnings while keeping things simple. With Sqrrl, it’s not about putting away large chunks of salary, but rather small sums with just a couple of clicks. Sqrrl is a wealth management platform. Sqrrl is an app-only platform with the MVP around savings and investment products powered by Mutual Funds.
Technology is being used for the greater good today, even in personal lives. It is an attempt to stay at the forefront of this new wave of technology by combining a great user experience with something substantial. The Sqrrl team works to simplify personal finance for millions of young Indians.
As of today (Feb 2021), Sqrrl provides 7 different products under their app —
Sqrrl operates in the personal finance space. The main target users are young Indians – both millennials and GenZs.
With an acute focus on the financial aspirations of the new age generation, Sqrrl is geared to capitalize on India’s 440 Mn millennials (390 Mn GenZ). The challenge here is that the younger generation finds financial products, boring, jargonized and not adding any value to their lives. The company wishes to change that by offering simple financial solutions that will bring a huge change in the financial wellness of its customers.
Sqrrl – Product/Service offered
The Sqrrl platform gauges the personalized investment needs of individuals and matches them with funds available in the industry. It is like a personal finance buddy that one can rely on to save and grow money. Sqrrl is an app-only platform with the MVP around savings and investment products powered by Mutual Funds.
As of today (Feb 2021), Sqrrl provides 7 different products — Systematic Investment Plan (SIP), Goal-based investment, Axe Tax, Sqrrl Away, Lump sum investment, Fixed Deposit and Personal Loans — under the app.
Samant Sikka (Chief Dreamer), Sanjeev Sharma and Dhananjay Singh are the co-founders of Sqrrl.
Samant Sikka (Founder & Chief Dreamer, Sqrrl)
Samant Sikka, the founder of the fintech has over 20 years of experience in financial services. He has major stints in Sales, Business Development, Strategy and Marketing with firms like Franklin Templeton, AIG Investments, Goldman Sachs & Axis Asset Management.
Samant Sikka, Chief Dreamer & Founder, Sqrrl
Sanjeev Sharma (Co-founder, Sqrrl)
Co-founder, Sanjeev Sharma, has over 16 years experience in financial services with background in business setup and expansion, financing and operational excellence with firms like Franklin Templeton Investments, AIG Investment & Pine Bridge Investments. Sanjeev and Samant have worked together in the past in Franklin Templeton and AIG and continued to be in touch.
Dhananjay Singh (Co-founder, Sqrrl)
The founders were very clear about the role of technology in solving the challenges for the customers and therefore, decided to bring in Dhananjay, who brought the Tech domain to the team which plays a critical role in our business. Co-founder, Dhananjay Singh is an IIT-Kharagpur graduate with an experience of over 20 years in data science and analytics, a professional with products and canned solutions background with firms like PWC, Tech Mahindra, United Healthcare and Axtria.
Sqrrl came into existence in early 2017 with the sole aim of simplifying personal finance for young Indians. The journey behind establishing Sqrrl is best described by Mr. Samant Sikka and Mr. Sanjeev Sharma who collectively have over 37 years of experience in the financial services.
Between 2006 to 2016, both Samant and Sanjeev observed an alarming trend with regards to savings in Indian households. India, which is generally described as a saving-oriented country, saw a huge dip in household savings in the last decade wrapping up in March 2016. Statistics show that household savings fell from 22% to 19% as compared to GDP’s ratio, which increased from Rs 0.23 lakh crore to Rs 1.36 lakh crore during the same 10 year period.
Today, in contrast to savings the internet offers various unprecedented methods to spend money. One can easily see that spending is becoming increasingly easier and savings is becoming gradually difficult. To bridge this huge chasm between saving and spending patterns, Sanjeev and Samant decided to tap a new market – the millennials & GenZs.
Before launching Sqrrl, they did a hands-on primary research by meeting with salaried millennials at coffee shops, eateries and even hosted ‘Pizza & Beer on us’ sessions. Sanjeev and Samant ended up meeting approximately 400 young Indians in the age group of 25-35. The intent was to understand their relationship with money and challenges, whatever they were. Through these sessions, they collected some very powerful feedback.
Sanjeev and Samant says – The biggest lesson that we learnt is that for millennials the value of money as a concept has completely morphed into money-as-a currency, a mere tool to spend on stuff that they like.
Along with that, the biggest revelation faced by the founders of Sqrrl was – that a significant portion of this generation is living from salary to salary with barely any savings. Even though they are starting to work earlier than the older generations and getting higher salary packages, they are still struggling to save for anything. Using this feedback, they built multiple financial products to promote both savings and investing.
The founders were very clear about the role of technology in solving the challenges for the customers and therefore, decided to bring in Dhananjay, who brought the Tech domain to the team .
As one would think, the name Sqrrl was inspired by the tiniest of animals, Squirrel.
Sqrrl Logo
The main reason behind it is that a squirrel, despite its small size, plans for the future carefully. It saves a small amount of nuts gradually to build a full stock for the winters. And it does so, by being prepared for even the most desperate times in advance. The sheer size of the whole affair – a small squirrel working hard to save small everyday to make a full pile for the winters is very motivating. The main idea to imbibe financial discipline into young minds through a new financial product – to promote both savings and investing which fortunately, was achieved very well by this.
That’s what the founders of Sqqrl wanted people to think of when they looked at the brand. They wanted to use a young, fresh and vibrant brand name which millennials will associate with. Saving a small amount of money over a long period of time can do wonders.
Sqrrl’s business model is a combination of B2B and B2C.
Sqrrl has an app that helps the customers directly in saving and investing in mutual funds and taking personal loans
Sqrrl also has multiple integrations with banks and NBFCs that helps in bringing a substantial amount of revenue.
The platform’s subscription called Sqrrl Prime is another source of monetization for the business.
Sqrrl – Startup Launch
For the first 100 users of Sqrrl , it was a soft launch. The initial users were mainly people from the founders’ network. Slowly, the team started communicating with its target users through educating them about the need for financial planning in today’s world.
With education comes awareness and we were banking on that awareness to drive our product further into the hearts and mind of people. Facebook and Google definitely helped us in increasing the traction during initial days and even now – Says Samant Sikka (Founder, Sqrrl)
The initial challenge faced by the Sqrrl team was to build a Minimum Viable Product(MVP). There is no debate that one will always have aspirations to build a fully loaded offering with scarce resources. Humans are very optimistic like but it was important to draw a line. Therefore, few of the important decisions that the team had to make were about saying NO. Say NO to many features that the various customers will need. Instead of that they focused on building a sharp cut around a user persona with a particular use case.
In Sqrrl case, the team decided to start with saving and investment products, powered by mutual funds, specifically converting the challenges that they had heard from the target audience into Sqrrl’s offerings. However, all the challenges get magnified in case of financial services as there are multiple regulations to adhere to in letter and spirit. The list of things that one cannot do is longer than the things that you one do.
Since the founders of Sqrrl came from the industry some of the industry partners were very encouraging and offered support in making the journey of Sqrrl less complex. The other important challenge was around theproduct, execution and team. The enough time was spent on studying the ecosystem to build a product that spoke to people in everyday life.
An important decision that the Sqrrl team took was not outsourcing the technology, which meant that they had to slowly but surely start to put together a handpicked team of competent and domain experts who had been able to deliver a great product in a short time frame. There are other challenges that need attention in early days which are Product, Team, Execution, Infra and Funding. Some of these factors can be a big drag on the founder’s bandwidth, the ROTI (Return on Time Invested) is not very high, especially in early days.
“We made some decisions that helped us keep ourselves away from distractions. For example, one of the most important agendas was to keep fixed costs low and flexible, therefore we decided to work out of a co-working space Sproutbox” Says Samant
Fundraise is another time sapping activity and a big distraction from the core of the business.
“We, in the founding team were coming with approx. 2 decades corporate experience. Each decided not to raise any monies till we have demonstrated our ability to execute and therefore bootstrapped the venture initially. These were the easier parts which meant that we kept ourselves away from distractions” Samant added.
During 2020, Sqrrl expanded its wings beyond the sphere of savings and investment. It launched many new products and features to solve various financial problems of the customers. These include income tax return e-filing, starting a Fixed Deposit (FD), offering loans, a subscription plan called ‘Sqrrl Prime’ and protection products like accidental insurance.
Sqrrl’s partnership for offering Goal based investments with ICICI bank’s MINE, a millennial banking platform has also gone live in October, 2020.
Sqrrl – Funding and Investors
After almost a year being bootstrapped, Sqrrl raised the the first round of funding from Equanimity Ventures in June 2018 for 1 Million USD.
Sqrrl is fortunate to be led by a team of fantastic mentors including Carl Richards, Advait Dikshit and Shripad Nadkarni.
Carl Richards
Richards is a certified financial planner and has been the creator of the Sketch Guy column, appearing weekly in The New York Times since 2010. He is also the author of the book called The Behavior Gap which has been a huge hit.
Advait Dikshit
Dixit has been a management consultant for the past 19 years and is an avid speaker.
Shripad Nadkarni
Shripad Nadkarni is a brand and marketing Guru and presently also the co-founder of Maverix, which is a Mumbai based startup in the food space.
Sqrrl – Competitors
Some of the Top Competitors of Sqrrl in the market are Groww, ET Money, Fisdom and Scripbox.
Sqrrl got selected at the Reliance GenNext Hub, a scalerator program run by Reliance Industries and Microsoft ventures amongst 23 startups picked from approx. 1200 applications.
Sqrrl also have been featured in #Hot100 Startups in India.
The Sqrrl app has been featured on multiple occasions by both the Google Playstore and Apple App Store for its design and features
Sqrrl – Future Plans
In the future, the Sqrrl app plans on offering international investing, and stocks to its customers. Currently, the company is focusing extensively on partnering with banks, NBFCs and other platforms to enhance its distribution and reach.
In addition to that, Sqrrl have tie-ups with banking correspondent platforms and many more of these interesting partnerships are already under integration and closure. With the fast and fantastic evolution of the company, it is constantly finding channels to raise resources by speaking actively with financial and strategic investors.
Sqrrl – FAQs
What is Sqrrl?
Sqrrl is a wealth management platform founded by Samant Sikka (Chief Dreamer),Sanjeev Sharma and Dhananjay Singh. The Sqrrl team works to simplify personal finance for millions of young Indians.
Who are Sqrrl Founders?
Samant Sikka (Chief Dreamer),Sanjeev Sharma, Dhananjay Singh are the founders of Sqrrl.
How much funding has Sqrrl raised?
The first round of funding for Sqrrl came from Equanimity Ventures in June, 2018 for 1 Million USD.
Who are the Top competitors of Sqrrl?
Some of the competitors of Sqrrl in the market are Groww, ET Money, Fisdom and Scripbox.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Finin.
Suman Gandham was fascinated by the Neobanking wave in Europe. A neobank is a type of digital bank without any branches. Neobanking is completely online, rather than having physical presence at a location.
Founded in February 2019, Finin is India’s first, full-fledged consumer neobank to go live in the country. Since the launch in December 2020, Finin has seen about 4000 account opens and is looking forward to many in the coming days. One can open Finin Savings account in under 2 minutes with minimum KYC. Finin is a hyper-personalized neobanking platform, made with the purpose to bridge gaps using technology and help people develop a better relationship with money by simplifying antiquated banking services.
StartupTalky interviewed Suman Gandham (Founder of Finin) to get an idea on the Startup Story of Finin and to have a closer look on Finin Success Story, Funding, Business Model, Startup Idea, Founders, Growth & more…
Founded in 2019, Bengaluru based startup Finin is India’s first, full-fledged consumer neobank to go live in the country.
Finin provides users with a savings account powered by SBM and issues a VISA debit card. Finin helps empower users with Goal driven solutions via converting them into highly savings-driven financial disciplinarians through smart & relevant notifications, hyper-personalized solutions and nudge theorem to guide them into the 50-30-20 rule seamlessly.
Finin – Industry and Target Market
Finin is relevant across industries and market sizes and essentially a relevant product for anybody who has a smartphone and uses PFM (Personal Financial Management) or banking apps.
There is market size of 0.76 Billion, Finin can tap into. Finin started by targeting Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Its main focus is white collar job holders with a salary range of 30k to 90k per month, freelancers, students and millennials.
Finin breaks its user base into 3 broad umbrellas – Spenders, Savers and Borrowers. The aim here is to convert Spenders and Borrowers into Savers and funnel them into the Invest category.
Suman Gandham and Sudheer Maram are the Co-founders of Finin
Suman Gandham and Sudheer Maram
When Suman Gandham, Founder of Finin, came back from Europe with the idea to start a neobank in India, he was already bouncing ideas off of Sudheer Maram, co-founder of Finin who is also from a Financial background.
They both share an entrepreneurial mindset and are childhood friends. They soon joined hands to start working on Finin in February 2019. Sudheer did a BE in Computer Science from Madras University. He has been heavily involved in the Financial space and worked as a senior analyst with Infosys. He heads Marketing & Operations in Finin while Suman handles the tech, product and business side of the company.
Finin founders and team
The company has 15 employees currently. The work culture is highly motivated, driven and at most times fun.
“We work and eat together like a family. We celebrate small victories and help each other across departments” – Says Suman Gandham (Founder, Finin)
The early core team was a well picked list of recommendations from friends and family and the singular motive was to identify those candidates who had a passion for the idea and the appetite to work in a competitive environment.
Luckily for Finin, the core team is aligned to the vision and mission of the company and are keen followers of the Fintech and product innovation space. Its core team members are from Fintech backgrounds. Most of them have worked in startups where they have helped products go from 0-1 and everybody has a shared affinity for the problem Finin is determined to solve.
Suman was a Fintech VC in Barcelona and was fascinated by the neobanking wave that gripped the continent. Having observed some of the most successful neobanks and their inner workings, Suman was clear that a concept like this in india was absolutely essential.
He was already in conversation with Sudheer Maram, his childhood friend, a fintech space enthusiast and a finance industry person to brainstorm and lay the foundation of the idea. Sudheer, jumped the bandwagon and soon in Feb 2019, the company was founded.
“A lot of people claim that India is underbanked, however the reality is that it is indeed overbanked. The only loose end is that the solutions offered by most banks are strikingly similar in a manner to say that they lack personalization, apt utilization of data or technological inclusions to make the customer journey seamless and intuitive. The banking infrastructure is indeed a cumbersome and tedious journey.A hyper-personalized neobanking platform like ours is made with the purpose to bridge gaps using technology and help people develop a better relationship with money by simplifying antiquated banking services” Says Suman Gandham, Founder of Finin
Finin is based out of Bangalore, India and was founded in February 2019. It went live on 2nd December 2019 as the first consumer neobank in India. Finin is an online-only consumer neobanking solution partnered with SBM Bank India. By creating an account, one essentially creates a Finin Savings account and is issued a Visa Signature powered debit card.
Finin – Product, Features and How it Works
Finin has created an easy-to-do onboarding sequence that lets a person create a Finin Savings account in under 2 minutes with minimum KYC. Once the SBM powered bank account is created, a VISA Finin debit card is automatically issued and delivered to the user. While the card arrives, the virtual card has a lot of functions which allows for online payments and transactions.
Further to this, a user has the opportunity to link their other bank accounts to the app to get a rounded view of all transactions and balance in one-app view. This in fact is a very sought after feature as per Finin users.
The Finin app also gives one the functionality to create monthly budgets, basis which nudge theorem, AI powered analytics and insights are used to send users the save-spend data, recommendations on the best practices, reminders on trial subscription cancellations, bill payments, tracking refunds and even highly personalized notifications such as whether a user must opt in for merchant embedded features like Zomato Gold or Swiggy Super.
The nudge theorem employs the 50-30-20 rule to guide users effortlessly towards smart financial choices. One can create Goals on the app to practice discipline and allocate a weekly or monthly amount towards this goal. This goal comes with an added feature called Round off transactions feature which when opted for, an extra amount of the users preference is deducted and saved aside for the Goal. This is akin to finding money in your old jeans pocket.
The main idea of Finin is to convert spenders and borrowers into savers and eventually investors so that they move down the road to financial discipline and further still financial independence.
Right from a high utility neobanking app offering improved features such as easy transactions, easy card management which includes blocking or unblocking a card at the click of a button or enabling/ disabling contactless payments, international payments, ATM withdrawals and online transaction through the app easily and limitlessly, Finin also offers a suite of wealth management features such as budgeting and goal management. These features come gratis with nudge theorem powered insights and analytics that will not only give one a fullscape view of finances but also guide one into financial planning, discipline and independence.
Every new concept comes with its fair share of hurdles but nothing that has been difficult to overcome. We have fostered some very meaningful partnerships to align with our vision and offer the best version of the product we intended to create – Says Suman (Founder, Finin)
Finin is an acronym for Financial independence and that is how the team arrived at the name. The tagline, a new approach to banking was in fact exactly what the founders were sure to create. The logo is a tiered arrow pointing upwards indicating monetary stability, growth and independence.
Finin Logo
Finin – Business Model and Revenue Model
Finin is an app-based platform available in iOS and android devices. The founders intently looking at the user behavior and based on the findings, they we will be hashing out a revenue model at a later stage.
Finin – Startup Launch and Customer Retention
Finin team have been running a waitlist for a less than a year and nearly 10,000 people were already on the waitlist. So Finin’s beta and first set of customers came from here.
Finin noticed the largest influx from word of mouth marketing. The Finin team did things right by talking about Finin way before launch and onboarding a waitlist of exclusive early users. This also created noise among Fintech buffs and others in general. Customer retention is purely based on the features already implemented and the future roadmaps.
“We strive to offer impeccable and quick customer service which also aids with Customer retention” Says Finin Founder
The adoption of a new concept within the Indian population which is so hardwired to use tried and tested banking names, is probably the only challenge in paper. However, the Finin team have been able to navigate through this seamlessly by creating awareness, addressing the problem and solution together and even propagating financial literacy.
There is a general unawareness of finances and money management across India. Growing up, everybody is told to save but not quite told how. FDs and RDs ruled the roost but the general populace is unaware of smart financial decisions, the right financial terms and jargons and cannot, due to lack of awareness, pick the right options for themselves when it comes to selecting the best financial manager suite.
Banking institutions lack personalization due to their one-size-fits-all approach. It is also cumbersome to gain a 360 degree view of financial management and investments through such institutions. Having identified this problem, Finin aims to work as a go-to app for everyone’s money management.
Finin – Marketing Campaign
sincThe team at Finin noticed that quirky and relevant campaigns do extremely well. It ran a series called #NoWayHosay on its social media platforms. It also ran a #CashAgainstHumanity contest which really boosted Finin’s traction.
Since Finin’s launch in December 2019, it has seen about 4000 account opens and many more are coming on a day on day basis. The product adoption has been excellent as per customer feedback.
Finin raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A from Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures and are in the process of going for Series A round.
Finin’s funding details are as follows-
Date
Amount
Series
Investors
July 2020
Undisclosed
Pre Series A
Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital, Astir Ventures
Finin – Advisors and Mentors
Finin’s Investors are its mentors – Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures
Finin – Recognition and Achievements
Finin has been featured across podcasts, media houses, publications and much more through the course of 2020. Some notable ones are Yourstory, Mint, Business Today, CNBC TV18, ET, etc
Finin – Future Plans
Finin has a lot of feature roll outs planned in the near future. Mutual funds, investments, lending and credit cards are a few of them.
Finin – FAQs
What is Finin?
Finin is India’s first, full-fledged consumer neobank to go live in the country. Finin provides users with a savings account powered by SBM and issues a VISA debit card.
Who are Finin Founders?
Suman Gandham and Sudheer Maram are the Co-founders of Finin
What is Neobanking?
A neobank is a type of digital bank without any branches. Neobanking is completely online, rather than having physical presence at a location.
How much is Finin Funding?
In July 2020, Finin raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A from Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures
Who are Finin investors?
Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures
What is the USP of Finin?
Finin provides a high utility neobanking app offering improved and personalized features such as easy transactions, card management, wealth management features, budgeting and goal management and more.
In the unprecedented time, where everyone is talking about the economic slowdown and financial difficulties, there have been a few startups sectors that have managed grow exponentially well.
The Covid 19 pandemic has shaken the world and has brought many business to a halt, although startups have lost their momentum they are already on the path to recover while the newly created trends are expected to see a long term success.
Nasscom said that 40% off Indian tech startups were forced to halt operation, however the investments and startups have shown resilience and recovered as India saw a rapid shift to digital services and payments. Data from industry tracker Tracxn showed that, investors have put in about $9.3 billion into startups in 2020 despite the Covid 19 pandemic upending many sectors of the economy.
One of the simple explanation for the growth of some section of the startups is the emergence of the “Covid economy” which demands or medical supplies and coronavirus related goods which naturally grew during the pandemic, creating lots of opportunities for new companies to step in and take their share of a rapidly developing market. These companies realize that post Covid 19, this new normal will be accepted as the norm for the remaining in the competitive business.
For some of these sectors, the new normal would bring in newfound opportunities. A whole new market that was untouched before is now up for grabs. As we are talking of all this, some startups are already working upon the aforesaid scenario. Let’s take a closer look at the startup sectors that are most likely to flourish after the end of COVID-19.
Lets look at the Sectors that Bloomed During Lockdown
Ed –Tech
One sector that continues to grow rapidly is online education. With Covid 19 locking down Indian citizen since the end of March, online education and e-learning platform have become the need of the hour and so has seen an astounding adoption and exponential growth.
The online education sector is observing a sudden surge and people from all walks of life, all the Covid 19 affected nations are looking up to alternatives of conventional teaching and learning.
That’s not surprising, considering that a whopping 1.5 billion students were grounded almost overnight as cities locked down and schools closed. A report by BARC India and Nielsen reveals that there has been a 30% increase in the time spent on education apps on smartphones since the lockdown.
People are afraid to send their children to places where social distancing is not practiced and hence the ed tech sector is tapping on every possible entity they can.
Well known EdTech startups of India
Ed tech are coming up with solutions that find their usage in various places from universities and schools, to remote employee onboarding, and upskilling to learn new skills and hobbies. Byju’s India earliest Ed tech startup saw 7.5 million new users on its platform since it started offering free access to content. The time spent on its app increased from 70 minutes pre-lockdown to 91 minutes during the lockdown.
The story is the same for other edtech players in the arena. Unacademy recorded 1.4 billion watch minutes while Toppr saw 100 percent growth in free user engagement in March. While Edtech startups Great Learning said its annual revenue rose 150 percent to Rs 325 crore. The Vedantu platform has also grown exponentially to 6.5 lakh additional learners across K-12 and competitive exams such as JEE and NEET.
During the pandemic the demand for contactless solutions has accelerated the employment of fintech services. This growth of the fintech sector helped the users to check for much more personalized, multi optional financial experience and new trends in areas like banking payments, insurtech, etc. Out of 900 plus deals and $11.5 billion total funding raised in 2020, fintech topped the chart with $2.1 billion in funding and 131 in deal counts.
In such times fintech startups play a pivotal role as they are a perfect option to the stringent and conventional banking systems which sometimes fall short on policies. For small scale enterprise or unemployed individuals who require funds on short notices, these financial entities are the only ray of hope. The pandemic has acted as a booster for the country’s fintech sector giving it the much needed energy and growth trajectory to expand its footprint across the nation.
According to Inc42 Plus, funding in fintech is expected to grow to $2.7 Bn in 2021. This is why of the 11 Indian startups Unacademy, Pine Labs, FirstCry, Zenoti, Nykaa, Postman, Zerodha, Razorpay, Cars24, Dailyhunt and Glance that became unicorns in 2020, three belonged to the fintech segment. The growth volume stood at 70% from 1.30 billion transactions in December 2019 to 2.2 billion in 2020, while the value of UPI transactions increased 105% from Rs 2.02 lakh crore in December 2019 to Rs 4.16 lakh crore in December 2020.
Among the leading deals in the fintech sector last year, Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal-owned Navi Technologies led the chart with $398 Mn infusion by Bansal, Gaja Capital, and World Bank’s investment arm IFC, followed by Pine Labs at $300 Mn and PaySense’s acquisition by PayU at $185 Million.
The pandemic has pushed health and wellness services online and has resulted in a boom of online health and wellness services such as telehealth tech, remote diagnostics, and monitoring, remote mental healthcare, online fitness, healthy diets, motivational contents, and more. According to a report by Practo, online doctor consultations have increased 500% since March 2020, as five crore Indians are now accessing healthcare online amidst the Covid 19 pandemic.
Companies like Practo and DocPrime, mFine, CallHealth and Lybrate are some of the leading telemedicine startups, while other small startups are looking to make it in the industry that is currently on the rise. The telemedicine market in India is expected to reach $5.4 Billion by 2025 with a CAGR of 31%. Innovative technologies are allowing health organizations to enhance the access and reduce the burden on hospitals through real time consultation with doctors through smartphones tablets, laptops or PCs.
Telemedicine will reduce the time of consultations and improve the quality of healthcare services in rural areas, removing many of infrastructural challenges. Telemedicine can also help in reducing the burden on the tertiary hospitals by providing diagnosis and treatment to patients in their own geographical location and reducing chances of patient’s exposure due to hospital visits. While India is already one of the top 10 countries in the telemedicine marketing the world, adoption of a regulatory framework will help the segment grow rapidly.
Well known telemedicine startups of India
HR tech: Cloud and SaaS
The rise of HR SaaS and remote working platforms in times of Covid 19 is not surprising. SaaS and remote working tools fall right in the path of success in such times. Businesses are also now understanding the value and operational simplicity that cloud adoption can bring to their IT environments, and various reports forecast a further increase in the use of SaaS solutions in 2021 and beyond. These applications would serve the founding stones for the majority of business operations in the future and a haven for existing ones.
The covid 19 pandemic has been unable to dampen the interest of investors in Indian startups which offer software as a services (SaaS). According to a report by Brain and company the SaaS firms could capture 7%-9% of the market by 2022, and SaaS companies founded by Indians can reach upto $20 billion in revenue.
The global SaaS market is estimated to grow to $230 billion in 2022 from $145 billion in 2019. Startups such as Zoho, Druva, Icertis, and Freshworks which breached the $100-million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark, adding that there is a healthy pipeline of companies.
OTT platform have proven to be time and cost effective, provide a more personalized version of the same experience and one can experience these at the comfort of their homes. OTT platforms in India are growing exponentially in the terms of subscribership because of various reasons. Digital India plays a major role in promoting the use of OTT platforms to stream diverse content from all over the world. One of the reason the availability of cheaper smartphones and internet has enabled a large chunk of the population to gain access to online platforms.
Platforms like Voot, Sony Liv and Zee 5 are OTT platforms developed by existing broadcast channels to remain relevant and to cater to the shift in audience from TV viewership to OTT platforms. However, most of their content on these platforms are the same as the ones broadcasted on TV. With the entry of global players like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, users are offered a plethora of original content. Hotstar is currently the most popular OTT platform in India according to data from a mobile advertising and Internet service provider.
Online Gaming
In India, Covid 19 has taken this sector to the next level as there have been new gaming startups and platform have been reporting increased revenues mainly because of the pandemic. Furthermore, there is an emergence of new industry trends such as e- gaming, fantasy gaming and cloud-based gaming. Additionally, gaming is not only about playing anymore, but it is also about watching. the Indian online gaming Industry is growing at an exponential rate upon year and is expected to be worth $1.1 billion by 2021.
Winzo games reported three times more user engagement and 30% higher traffic in online mobile gaming. Similarly Paytm First games also reported 200% increase, with 75,000 new users only during the pandemic. Three in every five serious gamers are now playing for around four hours more than before the lockdown. The online gaming industry is still quite an unexplored area in India but the companies that have taken the leap are flourishing and are now expected to grow by 41% in 2021.
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Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Sector has emerged as a very important sector of the Indian Economy, contributing significantly to employment generation, innovation, exports, and inclusive growth of the economy. Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) are the backbone of the socio-economic development of our country.
It also accounts for 45% of the total industrial production, 40% of total exports and contributes very significantly to the GDP. Manufacturing segment within the MSME contributes to 7.09% of GDP. MSMEs also contribute to 30.5% of services. The total contribution of MSMEs to the GDP is 37.54.
U GRO has created a range of Sector Specific LoanProducts, using a combination of industry data and advanced analytics to unlock the true potential of business. Using sectoral knowledge from financial and non-financial sources. U GRO deep-dive into the ecosystem various business operates into understand the growth of the business venture.
U GRO Capital has developed a sophisticated and self-sufficient underwriting process, which is capable of approving principal loan to customer in less than 60 minutes. Their constant efforts towards bettering their existing processes have enabled them to launch an end to end digital platform – Sanjeevani, which is built upon a deep digital architecture, towards easing the borrowing experience and quickening the disbursals as the entire process, from filling the application form, sharing documents and getting disbursal of the loan can be completed from customer’s workplace within 3 – 5 business days.
U GRO Capital was the first organisation to adopt a sector specific strategy; the company realised that the cash flows of an electrical equipment manufacturer will be very different than that of an education institution or a pharmacy store – which implies that these entities need to be assessed in very different ways. U GRO deep-dive into the ecosystem various business operates into understand the growth of the business venture. Their statistical predictive models, augmented with external data sources, power assess business and create super-customized sustainable solutions that offer better prospects for long term growth.
They have solved for this using their proprietary solution “GRO Score”, which was implemented from day one of business operations. GRO Score utilizes a wide range of sector-specific parameters to estimate default rates. It has a Gini co-efficient of over 60%, indicating a high degree of stratification, and thus allowed them to remove 70% of ‘bads’ by removing the bottom 20% by GRO score.
U GRO Capital- Founders
U GRO Capital is founded by Shachindra Nath.
U GRO Capital founder | Shachindra Nath
Mr. Shachindra Nath has over two decades of experience in the Indian Financial Services industry, with a proven track record of building and scaling large financial institutions. He was formerly the Group Chief Executive Officer of Religare, where he successfully led the IPO process and established multiple successful new business lines. He began his entrepreneurial journey with U GRO Capital, where he seeks to build an institution that will provide real value to society and stand the test of time. He is a qualified lawyer and a University Rank holder from the Banaras Hindu University (India).
Abhijit Ghosh – Whole Time Director and CEO, is a passionate and visionary leader who brings more than two decades of experience to the company from his key roles across Banking & Financial Services, Consumer Appliances, Hospitality, Telecom & Healthcare. Prior to coming aboard, Abhijit served as the President and Chief Business Officer at Religare Finvest Limited. He has also worked at ABN Amro, Future Capital and ICICI Bank. He is a Science Graduate from the University of Calcutta and an alumnus of Kellogg Executive Education & XLRI Jamshedpur.
Anuj Pandey – Chief Operating Officer, is a founding team member who leads the Product, Strategy, Marketing, Technology, Analytics and Process functions at U GRO. Anuj brings 20 years of experience across firms such as Barclays Bank, ABN AMRO Bank, GSK Consumer & Religare Finvest. Anuj holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering (Mechanical) from Thapar University & PGDM from IIM Lucknow.
J. Sathiayan – Chief Business Officer, is a finance and banking professional who brings over two decades of experience in the domains of SME and Business Finance, Retail Liabilities and Assets, Third Party Products Distribution and other financial services at Religare Finvest and ABN Amro.
Manish Agarwal – Chief Risk Officer, is a member of The Institute of Chartered Accountants India, The Institute of Company Secretaries of India, and the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India. He has previously held roles including Chief Credit Officer at YES Bank and Head of Policy for Retail, Agri and SME at ICICI Bank.
The Company currently has nearly 200 employees and a loan portfolio of approximately INR 1,000 crores. U GRO has had a culture of innovation since inception, which has allowed for the many developments made. The organization has a relatively flat hierarchy, and senior management consistently interacts with employees of all levels within the firm.
The trigger behind instituting U GRO Capital could be traced back to the reflection on the state of MSMEs. It is really hard to acknowledge the fact that despite the MSME segment contributing to 30+% of India’s GDP, a vast majority of it lacks access to formal credit. U GRO was hence, instituted to ‘bridge’ this credit gap by utilizing our deep knowledge of the sectors, to build products optimized to the MSME needs, technology driven underwriting process for comprehensive assessment of MSMEs, critical to cater to thin file customers and also to achieve scale and enabling watertight corporate governance to eliminate possibility of egregious breaches in other market players. NBFCs are generally more nimble and able to specialize than banks, making them ideal for lending to the MSME segment, where a degree of specialization is requisite for good underwriting
U GRO was instituted with the buyout of Chokhani Securities Ltd, followed by its capitalization and rebranding with new management and business model to U GRO Capital. The technology architecture started with the building out of internal core processing platforms – LOS and LMS. Post this, the focus has been on developing tech modules for facilitation of each distribution channel viz. GRO Xstream for BFSI, GRO+ for Traditional Branch-led, GRO Chain for Ecosystem and GRO Direct for Direct Digital.
The company’s name was derived from the mission statement. U GRO was founded with the vision of ‘Solving the unsolved: India’s $300B MSME Credit Gap’, and their name speaks to their commitment to their MSME customers – they want to see “U GRO”, or they grow.
U GRO Logo
Shachindra grew up in a small town and in his early experiences in the carpet industry, he noted just how difficult it was to scale businesses as a result of insufficient financing availability. U GRO Capital is the manifestation of his dream of providing adequate financing to all fundamentally strong MSMEs, such that those entrepreneurs can achieve their own dreams.
U GRO caters to specific SME sectors by using their advanced knowledge of 8 sectors to create insightful loan products for each sub-sector. They use a unique combination of intelligence & technology using statistical predictive modelling to understand a prospective customer’s potential for growth. Their sub-sector level knowledge is derived from over 25 financial & non-financial sources to understand the ecosystem which the customer operates in.
U GRO Capital’s mission is to ‘Solve the Unsolved’ – the US$ 600Bn Small Business Credit Need. U GRO Capital believes that the problem of small businesses can be solved by building deep expertise around core sectors of MSMEs in India coupled with a data centric, technology-enabled approach.
U GRO Capital- Target Market Size
U GRO Capital is a pureplay MSME lender. The total addressable demand for financing from Indian MSMEs is ~INR 45 trillion, as estimated by IFC. Of this demand, only INR 23.7 trillion is met through formal sources – largely banks, NBFCs and other FIs. This leaves a gap of INR 21.3 trillion, which is estimated to be growing at over 7% per annum. U GRO’s vision is to cater to this gap.
MSMEs can avail capital through U GRO’s operational four-pronged distribution model-
Traditional branch-led channel: Sourcing through GRO-Partners (DSAs) – secured and unsecured business loans
Partnerships & Alliances channel: Sourcing through our fintech, machinery and BFSI partners to provide both secured and unsecured term loans with a range of tenures and rates basis security and collateral type
Ecosystem channel: Vendors, dealers and distributors of our partner Anchor corporates can avail supply chain financing from them with invoice collateral
Direct Digital channel: SMEs can directly apply for financing through their website, or through their fintech partnerships
While they have maintained a keen focus on their initial prime/near-prime target segment, they have also worked towards addressing a broader demographic as per their efforts to solve India’s MSME credit gap. This has seen them already cater to the working capital needs of vendors associated with their ecosystem anchors. Additionally, U GRO has built out a 9th statistical scorecard for microenterprises. Microenterprises behave as a homogenous group by size rather than by sector, making it ideal to build a separate scorecard to address all enterprises of a certain size and below rather than to try and underwrite them using their extant sector scorecards.
The coming months will also see the company launch their direct distribution branches. Until now, U GRO has 9 branches in Tier I metro cities, and these largely cater to the aforementioned prime/near-prime segment through an intermediated mode of distribution. In order to cater to MSMEs in Tier II/III metros and sub-urban locations, they will open branches in such locations and reach out directly to MSMEs. This will also see them foray into a higher yield segment.
U GRO Capital- Business Model and Revenue Model
The core revenue model is raising liability at low rates and disbursing loans at higher rates, thus earning spreads – riskier segments will have larger spreads, but this is counteracted by higher rates of bad loans Additional fee-based income sources come from upstream co-lending and other assignments. Incremental revenue sources include cross-selling, particularly insurance.
MSME loan requirements range from INR 1 lakh to INR 5 crores depending on sector in which they operate and their respective turnovers and business needs, and they step in to cater to the varying requirement, via their corresponding tailored services. In terms of pricing, their average yield on book for secured loans was 11.7% in June 2020, 18.5% for unsecured loans and 13.3% for supply chain financing.
On a blended portfolio level, U GRO’s yield was 14.1%. This is as compared to their weighted average on-book borrowing rate of 10.5% as of June 2020 – a figure that has come down significantly, and thus increased their spreads. The commissions to their U GRO Partners (DSAs) are in line with market norms.
U GRO’s first customers were achieved through a mix of their branch network and the BFSI partners, although largely the former. Their initial investment in branches and human capital infrastructure really increased the ease in building up their customer base, and U GRO reached 100 customers very shortly after commencing lending operations.
U GRO Capital- Marketing Strategy
Analytics and technology have been significant parts of U GRO’s organization structure from day one – it is a core strategic focus area for them, and they have invested in requisite manpower and infrastructure to enable advanced applications. This has resulted in their early success stories – their loan origination platform which connects to 24 external APIs and can produce an in-principle decision within 60 minutes, and their customized business rules engine which hosts all the credit policies and credit scores. U GRO has crossed Rs.1000 crore of disbursal and turned profitable in the first year and 100% of the loans have been processed through the system using their policies and analytical models.
U GRO is a fast maturing analytics practice with vertical competencies on data engineering, portfolio analytics and on-boarding science/ predictive modelling. They are making rapid strides in taking advance data science and ML/AI based applications to the market. They have developed an in-house ML deployment engine and are in final stages of implementing our home-grown alternative data model for credit assessment. Work has progressed to a great extent in their bid to digitize processes that have always been physical – such as location assessment, alternate data-based fraud checks, facial recognition and object identification.
They have also forged key partnerships across a number of channels, which are critical to their forward strategy as they allow for low opex methods of scaling up their book. The company has over 35 partners in their partnerships and alliances channel, ranging from partner BFSIs to fintechs to machinery partners. They also have 26 ecosystem anchors, through whom they lend to vendors. Notably, they have 5 marquee upstream co-lending partners – including SBI, Bank of Baroda and ICICI Bank.
For India’s largest public and private sector banks to be willing to co-lend with them at such an early stage is a huge indication of their trust in our abilities, especially as it pertains to being able to source and underwrite high quality MSME loans. Co-lending represents a highly value accretive channel as it comes with a combination of income on interest spread and also fee income.
It goes beyond saying that the COVID-19 was the most devastating thing happening to not only our economy but the entire world. It also posed as the biggest challenge to U GRO, too.
The pandemic induced lockdown was responsible for short term impact of non-disbursals from March to May 2020. The asset side goals being pushed back, they shifted their focus towards strategic improvements in order to make up for the lost time. They were to a great degree able to increase its capabilities on technological and governance fronts, towards their long-term goal of achieving an entirely digitalized underwriting process.
This included the integration of video KYC and digitalization of the personal discussion process and customer loyalty framework, and the development of an in-house rule engine. With a highly self-sufficient underwriting process and their strong liquidity base, they were able to resume our potential operations pretty strongly as their July disbursals bounced back to a staggering 80% of pre-Covid levels. As of September, they have fully re-achieved pre-Covid levels of disbursements despite the many limitations still in place as a result of social distancing. U GRO fully expect to be able to build on this and further scale their asset engine in the coming months and years.
U GRO Capital- Funding
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors Name
Dec 2017
NA, demerger of lending business of Asia Pragati
175 Cr.
PAG and Others
Dec 2017
Preferential Allotment
435 Cr.
ADV Partners, NewQuest, Indgrowth, Samena
May 2018
Preferential Allotment
192 Cr.
Large family offices and high net worth individuals
August 2018
QIP
112 Cr.
PNB, Samena
U GRO Capital- Advisors
One of the key advisors to U GRO is:
Global Value Creation Partners – led by Sanjeev Goel, ex-Head of Equity Investments FIG for EMENA and Asia at IFC.
U GRO Capital- Acquisitions and Mergers
U GRO Capital was formed through the acquisition of Chokhani Securities Ltd, there have been no further acquisitions till date.
U GRO Capital- Recognitions and Achievements
World BFSI Congress Awards by ET NOW in the categories – Financial Services, FinTech & Loan
‘Finnoviti Award 2020’ by Banking Frontiers, partnered by Deloitte in the category ‘Business Model – Innovation’
India NBFC Summit 2019 Awards by Perfios: ‘Rising Star of the Year’
Companies & Education Awards 2019: ‘The Most Trusted Company Emerging NBFC’
U GRO Capital- Future Plans
U GRO operates through their nine branches: Mumbai (Head Office), Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Pune. The Company’s total income stands at Rs. 30.79 crores for Q1 FY21 with a PAT of Rs. 3.73 crores and CRAR of 99.42%. The net worth of the Company stands at Rs. 926.1 crores as of June 30, 2020 with book value per share being INR 131.31.
The Company’s AUM at the end of June 30, 2020 stood at INR 847.4 crores across 7,343 customers. Of the total loan book, 69% is secured. Sectors including Education, Light Engineering and Electrical Equipment & Components constitute 54% of the total loan book whereas geographical concentration at a state-level is at a maximum of 21%. Notable partnerships include co-lending partnerships with SBI, Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank
While it is not possible to predict the trajectory of the pandemic and the subjectivity of the future, assuming a gradual remission, the company can positively expect to be normalized by the end of FY21.
For lending in post-Covid times, they have created an evolved loan program Sanjeevani which aims to boost the capital starved MSME sector. Already a pivoting platform, we continuously strive towards enhancing its self-sufficiency, as they commit to reach out to 500,000 MSME clients.
India is fast becoming a home for startups. With several initiatives that were undertaken by the Government to strengthen the economic state of the country, startups have witnessed a growth in mobility, food tech, gaming, and many other fields. The Confluence of social as well as technological factors has deeply impacted the investment scenario in the country. With the private sector underutilized, investments in the Indian market have increased.
The 21st century is all about Technologies like augmented reality and IoT, the new addition to the family being Blockchain Technology. This technology is not only limited to the creation of Bitcoin but has other applications too, which has raised a hype on the market. If explored its full potential, this technology can bring about revolutionary changes in various segments.
Investment Trend in India
Over 22 major languages are written in 13 different scripts and over 19, 500 dialects, that’s India, a culturally and linguistically diverse nation. These numbers clearly indicate a massive opportunity in the Indian market for vernacular interface and content. It aims at accommodating non-English speaking users with internet access and a medium to pitch in their ideas. People are making investments in different industries that are trending in the startup world. Let’s take a look at the industries that are trending and are becoming hot zone for investments.
Esports has exploded with popularity and is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. Esports and gaming took off with the release of Xbox in early 2000, even though the concept of video games had been there since the 1970s. Realizing the potential in this segment, developers pitched in this virtual world. By the year 2024, the global revenue of this industry is set to reach $1.08 billion
Social Commerce
Through social commerce, a user can browse and compare products on social networking sites, say Facebook, and then make the purchase on Facebook itself rather than going to the company’s website to make the purchase. Currently, there are three social media sites that own the social commerce space: Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. It is revolutionizing the face of online shopping and moulding e-commerce to give the customer a more social experience involving friends, family and peers.
Live Streaming
By providing real-time content, live streaming is a new way to attract and engage users by enabling them to connect instantly. The viewers can also communicate with each other on this platform. It gives the product or the service immediate feedback. This is a powerful marketing tool that the users find interactive and more engaging.
Fintech
With global giants zeroing on this space, financial technology is on the roll due to several reasons. With vast discrepancies in the country’s banking system, growing smartphone ownership, increasing access to the internet, a booming e-commerce market, and availability of a large talent pool with knowledge of both technology and financial services.
Direct-to-Consumer
Direct-to-consumer brands are transforming conventional and established marketing solutions by causing a fundamental change in the relationship of the brand with the consumers. Global suppliers are accessible now and consumers are willing to experiment with new brands that they discover online. Consumers are quite discerning in the quality of items they purchase, this is exactly what the DTC offers, a risk-free online shopping experience.
Blockchain Technology
Blockchain Tech has attracted the attention of people and has extreme potential to go big in the future. Apart from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins, it has many other potentials in the field of healthcare, insurance, artist royalties, voting and welfare benefits. NFTs are also peeking its head through this technology and people are taking an interest in them.
Conclusion
The startup ecosystem in India is growing every day, people are finding this enigmatic and are keeping their interest in these fields. It is quite natural that investors are going to follow the trends as they give hints about which market is in for the long run. Investors create their strategies according to them and invest in those fields.
FAQs
What is Blockchain Technology?
Blockchain Technology is a public ledger that exists across the network and is decentralized in nature and it can be distributed digitally.
What is a Market trend?
A market trend is the moving of the market in a particular direction and it can be identified by price action.
Is Esports popular in India?
Esports is quite popular in India, the gaming industry has rapidly grown over the years.
A common problem that people from middle and low-income group faces is shortage of money. Many plans and goals remain unfulfilled due to unavailability of money at the right time. Loans, especially personal loans, being collateral free can be a good way to solve this problem of money shortage. However, getting a personal loan is not easy either. From stringent eligibility criteria to extensive paperwork, there are lots of reasons which deter people from taking a personal loan. Thankfully, the situation is gradually changing. Financial institutions are now coming up with various viable loan options. Qbera, a Bangalore based fintech startup is making personal loans available quickly and easily so that you can get money just when most needed.
Qbera offers digital, quick, hassle-free personal loans. Founded in 2017, this Bangalore based startup offers instant personal loans to salaried and self-employed individuals across 900+ cities in India. Qbera’s vision is to provide super-smart, super-quick and super-fair credit services to creditworthy individuals. It aims to serve the underserved segment mostly comprising of individuals with low-to-mid level incomes, lower-than-prime credit scores, and those employed with uncategorized/unlisted companies across 900+ Indian cities.
Our core belief is to improve credit penetration in the economy by offering the best-unsecured loan services to salaried individuals in India.
Qbera Founders and CEO
Aditya Kumar, Anubhav Jain are the founders of Qbera.
Aditya Kumar is the founder and CEO of Qbera. He graduated in Economics from the University of Warwick. He is also an MSc in Investments from CASS Business School. Prior to Qbera, Aditya founded Oaktree International School, in Kolkata, which he exited in the year 2014. Aditya also worked with well-known organizations like Lehman Brothers and Clarks Group of Hotels.
Anubhav Jain is an alumnus of IIM Indore, where he did his MBA. He is an IT graduate. Prior to Qbera, Anubahv worked with LoanCircle as Director of Risk and Finance. He also co-founded StudyBud, a platform for simplifying campus placement preparations for institutes and students. At Qbera, Anubhav is the Head of Risk.
How was Qbera Started
The idea started with identifying a fundamental problem in the Indian credit market. A massive section of individuals remained underserved until fintech companies surfaced a few years ago. While a good number of individuals who once found it difficult to get loans can now get easy and convenient access to credit, the underserved market still holds tremendous potential.
The journey began with the understanding that credit penetration is extremely crucial for the economy. Individuals with subprime credit scores and those belonging to mid and low-income levels found it almost impossible to get personal loans from banks or traditional lending institutions. Fintechs have come in and turned the equation over its head.
Qbera started its operations in Bangalore and was launched in partnership with RBL (first lending partner). Initial capital was 3 crores – it was initially directed towards paying salaries of early team members, covering overhead costs such as rent, systems, etc.
Initial people, we spoke to Startup advisors, Industry professionals, Banks and NBFCs who were willing to collaborate in exploring the segment. The response was positive at the very least.
Qbera derives its name from “Kuber”, the Indian God of Wealth/Money.
Qbera Logo
What is Qbera
Qbera is actively addressing the problems of the underserved segment in India by offering instant credit to individuals who found themselves facing rejection owing to low-to-mid income levels, subprime credit scores and being employed with unlisted/uncategorized companies. Any person(salaried or self-employed) aged 23-55, with a minimum monthly income of 20,000 and a credit score of 625 or more can apply for Qbera loans. The best part is that the loan is disbursed within 24-48 hours.
Some of the key features of Qbera loans are–
1. Quick Registration 2. Minimal documentation 3. No collateral 4. Flexibility to Choose one’s own tenure 5. Budget-friendly interest rates 6. Security: Customer’s data is safe with 128 bit SSL encryption. 7. Simple repayment options: Qbera provides easy repayment of its smart loans through automatic debit of EMIs via NACH mandate.
Qbera offers loan amount ranging from Rs.1,00,000 to Rs.15,00,000. APR (Annual Percentage Rate) ranges from 11.99% to 35.99%. Loan lengths range from 12 to 60 months. Administration fee ranges from 1% to 5%.
Qbera’s USP is super-quick, super-smart and super-fair credit services through a paperless and presence-less loan process. Qbera uses alternative scoring methods to view a consumer’s profile comprehensively. Qbera’s eligibility framework isn’t confined to a consumer’s credit score and repayment history and looks at an individual’s social standing, income, ability to repay, employment stability, type of residence, etc. Qbera Focuses on data analytics and predictive analytics to understand consumer behavior much better and used various other methods through available data to more accurately determine a consumer’s repayment capability.
Qbera – Business Model and How it works
Qbera has partnered with Fullerton, RBL and IndusInd Bank to offer instant credit to individuals with a minimum net monthly income of Rs. 20,000 per month. Qbera determines the eligibility of consumers in-house, and Qbera’s lending partner/s come-in during the final stage of disbursement. The risk is shared in accordance with contractual terms with the lender/s.
Qbera – Funding and Investors
Qbera raised a 3 million dollar funding from E-city Ventures – the first round of funding since launching the startup. Qbera has utilized these funds for its expansion plans as well as to scale up its technology and offerings-
Funding Date
Funding Stage
Fundig Amount
Investors
2018
Series A
$3 Million
E-city Ventures
Qbera – User Acquisition
As revealed by Aditya, Qbera’s target market includes salaried/ self employed individuals between 23-55 years.
The industry in the next 5 years is expected to grow steadily, as the demand for credit products isn’t going to cease from any angle.
To generate more business, Qbera expanded its operations to several other cities in India, and also expanded its partner base to seal the deal with 2 other partners – IndusInd Bank and Fullerton other than its initial partner RBL bank.
Key strategy hacks followed by Qbera to expand its customer base are-
Accessing more relevant data and improving scoring models to take a larger view of available consumer data
Focusing on its funnels to convert creditworthy customers
Critically evaluating the mediums that influence its customer acquisitions.
As said by Aditya, arranging for enough capital to lend was one of the biggest challenges faced by Qbera. This challenge was met by Qbera by sealing new partnership with banks and NBFCs.
Acquiring an NBFC license is another challenging task. Futile tie-ups and unprofitable partnerships with channel partners is also a challenge for the company, which requires efficient handling.
Qbera – Competitors
LoanTap and MoneyTap are two core competitors of Qbera. Qbera is inspired by the excellent marketing campaigns run by LoanTap and MoneyTap.
Some other competitors are InCred, CapitalFloat, LendingKart, IndiaLends, Faircent, Lendbox, Progcap, EarlySalary and PaySense.
Qbera recently achieved a significant milestone by expanding its book size to over 100 crores. Qbera has its lending services across 180+ cities and serves 15,500 pin codes across the country. Qbera is the only fintech retail lender in India having such a vast presence.
With close to 100 crores of disbursal till date and less than 1% delinquency, we aim to soon be the largest digital lending platform in the country and further cement our leadership position in the alternate lending space.
Ashwini
