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Fello’s blueprint for gamifying GenZ savings - Manish Maryada
261 Plays1 year ago
How did Manish Maryada turn Fello into India’s go-to gamified savings app for Gen-Z—blending digital gold and P2P lending with prize-linked rewards? In this episode, we unpack the product, growth loops, and the future of fintech in India.
Fello is reimagining how young Indians save and invest—turning habit formation into a game. In this candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Manish Maryada (YC W22) breaks down Fello’s mission, how prize-linked savings drive frequency, why digital gold (Augmont) and P2P lending (Lendbox) anchor early portfolios, and how the team scaled to hundreds of thousands of users without cashback gimmicks. We discuss cohort wins and misses, retaining first-time savers, the funding-winter playbook, and how Fello navigates policy gray zones around gaming, GST, and digital gold. Expect contrarian takes on growth vs. trust, rails vs. UX, and what’s next for Gen-Z finance. If you’re a founder, operator, or investor tracking fintech disruption and distribution in India, this one’s a masterclass in product-led growth and regulatory literacy.
• How Manish built Fello’s prize-linked savings engine for Gen-Z
• Lessons from scaling fintech in India’s funding winter
• Fello’s growth levers: digital gold, P2P, and habit loops
• Macro shifts: GST, gaming policy, and the future of digital gold
• Founder insights on competition, unit economics, and trust
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Follow Akshay Datt on LinkedIn for exclusive content
Visit founderthesis.com for more founder stories
00:00 - Manish Maryada’s Journey & Fello Origin
04:12 - Gamified Savings: Prize-Linked Model
10:40 - Digital Gold via Augmont: Trust & Safety
18:05 - P2P Lending with Lendbox: Returns & Risk
26:18 - Growth Without Cashbacks: 750K Users
36:42 - Funding Winter: Fintech Survival Playbook
48:10 - Regulatory Landscape: GST, Gaming, Gold
57:55 - What’s Next for Fello & Gen-Z Finance
Manish Maryada, Fello, Fello app, Fello India, gamified savings, prize-linked savings India, digital gold India, Augmont, P2P lending India, Lendbox, YC W22, Gen-Z investors India, savings app India, fintech startups India, funding winter India, fintech regulation India, GST online gaming, digital gold regulation India, product-led growth, Akshay Datt, Founder Thesis Podcast
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Transcript
Importance of Early Saving
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm Manish, I'm the co-founder and CEO fellow.
00:00:15
Speaker
At a very broad level, managing your finances when largely comes down to your ability to save money early and frequently. Someone who starts saving at 20 will be miles ahead of someone who starts saving at 35. But the problem is how do you get a 20-year-old to save?
Innovative Approach with Fellow
00:00:32
Speaker
This is where the Innovative Fintech Startup Fellow comes in.
00:00:36
Speaker
The one thing that 20-year-olds like to do is play games and especially play real money games. Fellow asks the question, what if you disguised a savings app as a real money gaming app, giving all the thrills of gaming but also giving the long-term benefits of saving money?
00:00:52
Speaker
In this episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, your host Akshay Dutt interviews Manish Mariada, the founder of Fellow, about the unique thesis behind the product and the zero-to-one journey of building a FinDeck product. Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis Podcast on any larger streaming platform to discover unique startups chasing large market opportunities through disruption.
00:01:22
Speaker
So, you know, given this is an idea of how big is fellow today, share some numbers just to set a context. Absolutely. So we have started solo in number 2021. I mean, that's when we launched the main version of the product.
00:01:40
Speaker
And from there till today, we have over 750,000 users using the application. 98% of our consumers are first time savers and investors falling within the issue of 21 to 25. 72% of our user base came in completely through organic reference.
00:02:00
Speaker
a massive chunk of the users are salaried folks who are investing on the platform. And today, as we are speaking, we have closed two rounds of funding. We raised a few five million dollars till date. And right now we're a team of 25 members. So that's how big the theme is. Last year, we were just like five members. Right now, everything went fivefold. Numbers went tenfold. That's how we are at this point in time.
00:02:26
Speaker
And what is your AUM? AUM would be the right metric for your industry, right? So our AUM figures are on the upward note of $3 million at this point of time while we are speaking. How much is that in rupees? So in rupees, it roughly comes up to, you would say roughly around 24 karodes. And in the long run, our North Star gold.
00:02:47
Speaker
is to have, by end of this year, our AEM, we are hoping to have a 50 million asset vendor management. One of the key metrics what we also want to measure being a B2C company is retention cohorts. We want to have a retention cohort of, on the upward note of 40 to 50%, three month retention, that is what we are talking about. And that gives us a very, very good success metric, not just the AEMs, but even the retention, because that's how we play the B2C game as well. So we want to make sure that people are loving the product,
00:03:16
Speaker
Can you define how you calculate retention cohort? What does that mean? Say you actually you're summing and saving on the application on day one. We want to make sure that even on day 90, you're saving it and see if hundred people are saving on day one.
00:03:34
Speaker
I don't withdraw my savings or do you mean to say that I put in more money, I save more money? Exactly. You save more money. What we're hoping is, if 100 consumers have invested on day one, you want to make sure that at least 40 of them are continuing to invest on day 90 as well. So that is what we mean by retention cohort.
00:03:57
Speaker
Okay. So what you want is essentially that roughly half of your user base should be regular savers, not just one time savers. Absolutely. Our one month retention is on an upward note of 50%. So within one month, people are on a higher note of 50%. And three months, we are roughly within the ballpark figure of 20 to 25 ish. And this is where we want to keep pushing it.
00:04:23
Speaker
And that is where we launched the new version of the product in October 2022. And from there, like we got great traction coming up because I mean, there are a few challenges what we had with the previous version of the product and these subtle releases have sort of helped us in solving those challenges.
00:04:39
Speaker
Let's kind of zoom into that journey. I love hearing the journey of Windows products, finding product market. Zero to one journey. So, you know, your first exposure to the world of startup was when you were at Connex. So from there to Fellow, you know, just how did Fellow get born?
Manish's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:04:59
Speaker
Get it. So I guess Coinix was one of the best, incredible journeys what I had. I joined as an intern and first non-dexing member in the company and Raul Rakesh Aditya, they were kind enough to give me the opportunity to do everything within the company. My biggest experience has been in terms of customer success and also in terms of product because I come from a master finance background.
00:05:22
Speaker
Why did you join as an interview? I can see on your LinkedIn profile that you were already, you had like a year of WorkEx with HSBC as a software engineer. Yes. It's a very big bet, which I took. I came back from US, I did my Master in Finance at A&M. One of the reasons why I came back also was I got some really good offers in India and finally I was interviewing with Goldman and JP Morgan back then.
00:05:48
Speaker
And while those offers were there in hand, when they're interviewing this, my brother told me that there is this company called coinix, which started and it's the first crypto exchange in India. And back in us, I was, I was mining cryptos on my real, you know, a laptop.
00:06:03
Speaker
So I was like, let me give a shot. Let me speak with them. And it wasn't even an interview with Rahul. It was just conversations. We're talking about what future products we could build. I come with this good traditional finance background and you know, and even I knew crypto. And that's how I knew that, hey, this company is going to be something. I checked all my job offers. I told that, yeah, I'll join you.
00:06:22
Speaker
I told that we can't onboard you. He thought that I would be expensive. I told that don't be me. I'll join as an intern, pay your intern salary to him. I just want to be in the part of this company and that is the best bet what I took in my life. I feel that if I did not take that.
00:06:37
Speaker
I wouldn't have been building a fellow because coinix helped me understand the ABCs of building a company. I had the zeal to build a company but I did not know how to build it. I knew my limitations. Now coinix helped me to understand every missing piece what I did not know and that is how it laid the initial basement for me to build fellow in the long run.
00:06:56
Speaker
So yeah, build-scale CoinX along with the co-founders, even CoinX pivoted to Flobus eventually, also had the experience of how to sell. CoinX, were you on product development, were you on customer acquisition, which side were you on?
00:07:13
Speaker
I tell you, where exactly? It was almost like, you know, there's one person in the company who looks into everything, right? I was the kind of company, to be honest. For the first few months, when we launched it, the biggest problem what company had was setting up financial operations. Now that is where my biggest skillset went into.
00:07:29
Speaker
Now after that, a company did not have a PM batch then. The product manager came in a bit later. Now that is where me and my other friends, we both had the experience of crypto and trading. We were working very close with the tech team and the product side to come up with new products. And that is where it was a sweet intersection between operations and product where my expertise was happening. But also in the long run, I set up the initial practices of business. Like whenever new tokens were getting listed, new partnerships had to happen.
00:07:58
Speaker
I was working closely with Aditya to get those things happening also. But once in the long run, you know, company was pivoting and all those things was happening. I completely moved into product management. And that is where in the long run, I turned out to be the product manager for the company with expertise in other areas. I mean, that's a beauty, right? Like if I wouldn't have done that, I guess building a company would have been difficult for me as well. So though I did not have a specific designation, that helped me a lot right now in terms of leading other teams. Got it. Okay. So from there to fellow.
Creating Fellow Through Research
00:08:28
Speaker
Yeah. So, Flovis came in and Flovis was B2B in nature. And of course I love the idea. I mean, right now they're being a 42 million dollar company. I was just, you know, I was more of a B2C person and Flovis was something turning out to be B2B. And that is where I felt that it is the right time for me to take an exit because I know how to build a company. I know what, how to sort of tackle problem statements. And it's a very healthy, you know, synergies what I have with the founders and I took an exit.
00:08:57
Speaker
and went on streets, just started speaking with people and businesses to understand problem statements. My first idea was into AgriTech and I was with visiting villages, speaking with people over there. And that's where I came to the limitation that though I had an amazing problem statement,
00:09:15
Speaker
With my background, I just can't solve it. That is where I got my limitation. And that's when I came across some amazing fintech ideas. And I knew that my background wasn't final. Let's start solving this. Once I got into, I knew the problem statement. I knew it was a tech-centric company and I did not have a tech co-founder. Unfortunately, though I can speak tech, I can't write tech. I mean, I can't write code. So that is where what I did was I joined this talent investor program called Entrepreneur First. That's where I met my co-founder.
00:09:45
Speaker
What all ideas I had, I ideated with Shouria again together, and eventually we came across the idea called, you know, and we did, we launched the initial MVP roughly within, decision-making framework. You must have had a, like a way to decide out of 10 ideas, which one we take up. I guess, I guess very less people asked me this question and I'm answering this question after a long period of time, glad to sort of stay the same. That's why.
00:10:10
Speaker
So, first what I look into is the problem actually existing in the market. One of the things which I tell very often is don't try to squeeze the products into the market, build a product, taking the problems into consideration. So, my framework is very simple.
00:10:27
Speaker
First, out of 100 people whom you speak with, at least 40% of the people should be having this problem. Now since these 40 people are telling that is a problem, it doesn't mean that that can turn out to be a business. Now that is where I look into the potential market size, like how much each individual can pay me as to have the right to pay it off.
00:10:47
Speaker
Now, out of these 40 people, 20 people will pay me. How much will these 20 people pay me? And looking into that, I do the market sizing. Now, if that makes sense to me, that is where I go ahead and build a business. Because an idea can be a business, but a business, there's no harm and partial that, you know, a business need to originate from an idea. So that is how my framework goes about. So I had three, four ideas.
00:11:12
Speaker
Like you had like a cohort of 100 users who you like reached out to and you did like a telephonic service or something and to validate. Yes. So how we did was the overall data set was 2,100 people.
00:11:32
Speaker
Google form or like actual calls? So an actual calls, everything was an upward note of 300 plus. The remaining was Google forms and these and the 300 were calls. 50 plus were in-person conversations as well. And this was my only work for three months. Nothing else. I took my job.
00:11:51
Speaker
part of the years, there's nothing else we were doing. And that is where we got some really granular data in data inputs. The first problem shouldn't, what we found was people are not inclined towards healthy finances, especially 21 to 25 old individuals. They were not investing a healthy and 60 people did not have enough money for the next three month needs. And in spite of these financially vulnerable conditions, they were glued towards fantasy paid and casual start giving apps. Whereas spending 500 rupees per day to get financial rewards.
00:12:20
Speaker
Deepanso, they were losing out. That simple idea over us was, since they're expecting financial rewards, X goes to Y in finance, X is going to Y in gaming as well. It's only the front end experience for them, which is different. So you put a hundred rupees in your savings account or you invest a hundred rupees. You put that with the whole intention of it to grow.
00:12:39
Speaker
That is why people invest in stock market. That is what people want their money to grow. Now, when we spoke with consumers, they specifically came with the term, we want those financial rewards. Like for example, I don't want to see the fantasy gaming applications or other gaming applications that being an entry fee in order for the money to grow into something else. Of course, the risk to reward is so high in gaming. That is why you have the potential to lose out the entire amount. Now that is where we felt that, you know, let's reduce the risk appetite a bit.
00:13:08
Speaker
Let's make sure to give them the same experience of gamification and let's take that active. Let's take gaming as an activation to bring them into healthy finance. So what we'll do is the back end infra has been banking. We've wrapped around, we just gift wrapped with the gaming experience and offered them on a platter under the name. So that's how we got the idea. Interesting. So what you found in your, just in a quick recap. So in your conversations, you found that
00:13:37
Speaker
People are into real money gaming with the objective of growing the money. They know that not every bet will pay off.
00:13:47
Speaker
the other four bets, what I lose money will get recovered and I'll make something over and above the total amount. So you thought that, okay, this is an interesting behavior. Let's make this more linked to it directly saving instead of a gambling in a way. There are three insights what we got. First problem statement, I told you, right? Like very poor English and personal finance. Then when we got the first problem statement, our first idea was to build a global advisory application.
00:14:16
Speaker
Back then, RoboAdvisory was something which was moving up significantly, but we saw that all RoboAdvisory applications back then had turned out to be acquisitions by all the big giants. Now, we showed you examples of RoboAdvisory startups. So, there was this company called Walnut. Walnut was eventually acquired by capital float right now, one of the biggest lending company in India. Then there was another company called Squirrel. I guess they have been acquired by one of the leading banks as well.
00:14:42
Speaker
So we saw that all the robo-advisors have been turned out to be in this position. A company like Deserve is not robo-advisory, which is in to wealth management. Deserve is not in to robo-advisory company. What is the difference between robo-advisory and wealth management? What robo-advisory does is, it asks you to link all your bank accounts and your savings investing accounts and they ask you some basic questions.
00:15:06
Speaker
And based on your spending pattern, based on your risk appetite, they say that hey, start investing in this thing. You're spending so much into last month, you spend say 500 rupees into like 5,000 rupees into food. Make sure that next month you start spending. So it's almost like a party which is lying within your phone and giving you financial advices.
00:15:26
Speaker
and cross-selling other financial products. For example, say that I linked my CIC credit card to say that, hey, for your consuming pattern, this credit card might not sound good to you. Use this credit card because you're also traveling secretly. So that's how you robot. There's this amazing company called Clio in UK. Like that was a huge inspiration for us when we came across the problem statement. So through a robot, we wanted to push them into healthy finance. That was the idea what we had.
00:15:51
Speaker
But we realized that in India, people don't pay for software appointments. And secondly, we saw all the robot advisors have been becoming acquisition channels for all these big companies. So the Western model of robot advisory is that you pay fixed fees. There's a fixed fee.
00:16:12
Speaker
People prefer to pay the commission rather than the fixed fees. Exactly. This now is earning the commission rather than the fixed fees. Exactly. This is mostly into mutual funds. So what they do is they do your risk profiling and then taking your risk profiling into consideration, they give you those specific funds in which you could invest and you get those percentage of returns. So yeah, that is what deserved us.
00:16:38
Speaker
And they are through commissions as opposed to commissions. With all the asset management companies with mutual funds they are selling, they earn a percentage commission order. So that's the more close to the investment with commission. Exactly.
00:16:57
Speaker
Talking about coming back to the problem, you know, when we were stuck at this point, we did another round of interviews with the consumers and the same set of people who initially gave us answers. This time, the question was very, very simple and very fun for them.
00:17:12
Speaker
We asked him from the time you wake up at six in the morning till the time you sleep, what do you do? That is the question what we asked. We wanted to understand the behavior patterns. Now that is where we got three insights. The first thing is these people moved into UPI and digital mode of payments only because of two applications, Google ban phone pay. Now when we asked by these two applications, they told that whenever we make payment through these apps, we get incentivized in the form of scratch cards.
00:17:39
Speaker
And I asked them like, sometimes you don't get the money also, right? Why are you still using only these two apps? There are so many UPI applications. They told that sometime or other we might get it, right? So I'm fine with it. So this is the Indian consumer behavior that if there's a possibility of getting an incentive or a reward, they might tend to do it. There's a first data point what we got. The second data point what we got was there were a set of people who are into healthy finance or the people whom we interviewed. We asked them, how did you get into healthy finance?
00:18:07
Speaker
They told it, it's our friends, family who sort of told us, it's mutual fund by Sadal though, if not put money into the stocks, it will grow. We realise that community effect is very crucial for adaptation of something within the Indian ecosystem.
00:18:22
Speaker
And so this third, this is the holy grail forest where it found out over 60% of the people with whom we spoke, they were glued towards paid fantasy and tacit style gaming, where they were putting X amount to get some financial reward in return or to win something back. Now gaming is such an ecosystem which incentivizes you, which has a community effect associated with it because gaming is a community driven activity and people are glued to it.
00:18:45
Speaker
Now that is where we felt that why don't we merge gaming and finance together and see how things shape up. And that's how the idea came up. That's been the story of
Inspiration and Adaptation from Yotta
00:18:55
Speaker
fellow. Initially we launched an MVP. Can you spend a minute on Yota savings? What is it?
00:19:01
Speaker
Oh, it's a very cool idea. What Yorta is saving? So, in US, Lottery is a very big problem. Yorta is a price-linked savings account. Basically, Feller is also a price-linked savings account, but we don't use it a lot. Yorta is a price-linked savings and banking application where users can save their money and get interest earned in the rewards of Lottery earnings.
00:19:20
Speaker
How the application works is very simple. For every $25 you save on the platform, you get one lottery ticket. The more $25 you save, the more lottery tickets you keep getting. And every week they take out these lottery winnings and whoever wins in this lottery, they get rewards up to $10 million.
00:19:37
Speaker
Now, even if you don't win, your money grows by, I guess, 0.5% or even up to 4% of your savings goes over there. So on one hand, 4% returns APY and on the other hand, a potential to win $10 million. So that is what Yorta savings is. Yorta has been started by these two folks, 30 and 30 folks, Adam.
00:19:57
Speaker
I mean, I'm very well acquainted with Adam as exchange notes. And they have been backed by Y Combinator. They raised on an upper note of $15 million in date. And they're doing phenomenally great in the US ecosystem. There's another company called Price Pool which does this. Frank is the founder of Price Pool, again acquainted with him as well. We did this research before building something like that for the Indian audience when it's on the same property. So yeah, that's what the auto savings does.
00:20:24
Speaker
And I believe one of the founders is a YouTube social influencer. Yep, exactly. So Adam is the one, he's an influencer also. Oh yes, yes. Adam Moelis. So which gave him a distribution, like the biggest challenge in a B2C app is distribution. So that being an influencer that automatically guarantees a certain bit of distribution.
00:20:47
Speaker
I guess, I'm just trying to recollect if Adam was the influencer or not, but they had a very good GTM, to be honest, like, you know, they were able to grow fast. They were able to attract massive events in a very good point of time. Because that 10 million, win $10 million. That was the value proposition they sold. And you don't need to spend for lottery ticket.
00:21:10
Speaker
you are just saving, like you never lose out on your capital, that is the beauty of, pricing, banking all together. And a quick factoid for all the listeners and even for you Akshay, like,
00:21:21
Speaker
Abu Dhabi, most of the Gulf banks do this on a very regular basis. You see, they give lottery tickets, a banking, and every month they take one big winner and they give them guards, et cetera. So that is pushing them towards healthy savings. And I don't know if you know this or not, but there is a bond in UK called premium bond, which runs on the same idea. So governments were able to sort of push people into healthy finance by gamifying a lot. And that is what we are trying to do for the Indian ecosystem.
00:21:51
Speaker
Amazing. Okay. So, okay. We've come to the birth of the idea. Now, how does the idea become reality? First idea of becoming reality is all about first validation and that were two levels. For us, the first level was, as I told you,
00:22:08
Speaker
The idea was there, but no one did it. We wanted to build a POC and try and test it out. Now the first POC was executed with 2,500 people. And, uh, I mean, of those people, 92% of the people came in through reference, like organic reference. I say like within one month we became lot, we became extremely viral.
00:22:29
Speaker
And people are investing, of the investing users, 60% of the people were repeat investors. You win a game? How did you win a game? I mean, game building is not... Me and Shaurya had very simple deliverables. Like our pitch day was somewhere in the month of December.
00:22:49
Speaker
We had to build a B2C company. I see on the basis of the idea. I was talking about our days at Entrepreneur First. So our pitch day was somewhere in the month of December and building a B2C and getting traction was difficult. So what I told Shaurya was, let's do it. Even Shaurya told, let's do it. I told Shaurya that I will get the license. We needed an AMP license to execute it.
00:23:15
Speaker
and then make sure to get the mutual fund on place. I asked him, you built just one game. I feel like since titles you to sell mutual funds. Exactly. For that we need to write an exam. Part of the asset management company. I told I'll take care of all those things because I have the connections. All I want you to do is build a mini version of a game which works and that's it. And it builds a Thambhola game.
00:23:38
Speaker
And so the first version of the application is almost like an exit spreadsheet where three sections, one's first section was the game, second section was the fund, third section was the referendum. That's it. So we just launched it. What we did was we put it on all our WhatsApp statuses. I push all my friends to put their WhatsApp statuses, put it on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
00:24:00
Speaker
For the first 100, we're completely through our activations. The next 2,400, we don't even know how it came. And we're talking about fourth shift degree reference over here. At 3 o'clock, our messages are buzzing with customer support tickets. And people are investing left, right, center. Now, how did it work? So like you don't customer save 100 rupees and get a chance to pay double or something like that. Back then, how would the first one of the product work first? You save 100 rupees, you get one tambola ticket.
00:24:26
Speaker
And every week we used to take 21 numbers. If these 21 numbers match with the 15 numbers mentioned in your ticket, you win. Even if you lose, nothing happens. Your money is invested in this ICICI potential mutual fund, which grows by, I guess we gave a liquid fund. Liquid fund was giving returns of the 6% back then. It was a low risk fund, which we offered to people. So 6% returns and potential back then we gave rewards of just like 5,000 to 10,000 rupees because we're putting every money from our pocket back then.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah. So, people loved it. People loved the idea because on one end, money was going on and they were getting this gaming tick and people just put their services on the WhatsApp channel saying that, hey, this application, they're able to grow and win. Even that the same thing which happens right now. So that's the first version. We validated it. It is the first seed check of a million dollars now from Entrepreneur First itself and Entrepreneur First,
00:25:20
Speaker
led our seed round and we also got early investors of Yorta savings backing us. A few ventures as one of them who backed us. Then we got some amazing angels like Bana part of Sarathi, Ashneer backing us at a very, very early point. There was even upspots which was micro we see in India who sort of backed us.
00:25:37
Speaker
Now, product is running, but this product is not enough to push to a B2C ecosystem and scale it. Now, that is where we started hiring with the money, what we got. And in November 2021, we launched the new version of the product and that gave us massive reach to wherever we are right. Of course, we had another new version of the product launching. Now, the second version of the product was to validate the product as a massive scale and replicate the same figures, what we were able to replicate at a very early point of time.
00:26:07
Speaker
So, that is something which we are able to do in a really good way and that is how the product actually became a success at this point of time. That is why we got into YC as well because the second stage of metrics were really good.
00:26:20
Speaker
So, how did the product go on? It stayed with Tambula only? So, first it was only Tambula. We started getting a lot of requests from people for more and more games and even more and more funds. So, the second version of the product had four games and we had, you know, one investment vacant, which is digital gold.
00:26:43
Speaker
We eventually removed the ICC potential mutual fund for the reason being that it had six-step KYC verification process. We were trying to tap onto first-time investors and I was a FinTech company asking them to put money. Now the people had the resistance that they are first-time founders. You're asking me to put money and you're asking me to do six-step KYC verification process. You're asking them to ban other everything. They freaked out.
00:27:07
Speaker
So that is where this beautiful digital poll product came, where we, where they need only fan car for investment up to 2,000,000 rupees. So we sort of put it in and then there was no looking back. People are investing for every rupee they saved, they were getting fellow tokens. Now using the fellow tokens, they were able to play the games and win rewards. So that is how the second version. What games did you add? We had cricket, we had football, we had pool, and of course we had our OG Tambola because that is a most played game even today on the application.
00:27:36
Speaker
Now, like cricket can be a very massive, expensive game to build. Like what was your cricket like? So all these hyper casual games, that is what we build. We're not talking about games which are built on unity and high graphic intensity. These are casual HTML games that people just want to play and get the fun out of it. And that is a typical consumer's psyche also, what we have on the platform. And how we build the games is very simple.
00:28:04
Speaker
of the 10-member tech team, six or seven people have the skill set of building games. But since scale was super important to us, we partnered with two screen-based game developing companies, and they shipped all the products to us at a very cheaper price, like extremely cheap. So that really felt that we had the potential right now to ship one game every week.
00:28:24
Speaker
So that's how those people powered us in shipping more and more beams. Amazing. Okay. So this was a V2 of a product. Yes. And on the basis of this, you brought it to YC. What next after YC?
Product Evolution Post Y Combinator
00:28:39
Speaker
After YC, it was validating the product at a massive scale and we wanted to gear up for the next round of funding.
00:28:46
Speaker
And also, we wanted to start talking about the business challenges, which we have. And I'm saying business standards are not star goals, which you want to do. That is where we wanted to see how exactly we can increase the aspect of management, how exactly we can increase retention for the people, and thirdly, how exactly we can make them use new products on the platform, needs for the three problems. I mean, problems which you wrote down on our table and started solving them.
00:29:13
Speaker
And once we started asking consumers these questions for the problem of how to increase aliens, the answer what we got was give us funds, which give us more returns and also give us mutual funds, not a free class for mutual funds and tax-related funds. That is something which we baked into it. The second... Digital Gold is not a mass market product, I guess.
00:29:32
Speaker
It is not a mass market product at this point of time, but if you see the last one year, it is the only asset which was able to give 10% and plus returns. Of course, inflation and everything had its own reasons, but with majority of the consumers still saving money in banks where inflation is eating away their buying power.
00:29:51
Speaker
Gold has been a great asset to hedge their risks. So that is why gold has been a really good asset. That is why we actually sell gold a lot also. More than 80% of our volumes come in gold. But people are saying that they want to save taxes. That is something which came out super loudly. And they want to earn returns more than 10%.
00:30:11
Speaker
Now, that is where we started offering new products. The first product is a peer-to-peer asset class, which gives them 10% return. Very low risk peer-to-peer asset class gives them 10%. What do you mean peer-to-peer asset class, like peer-to-peer lending product? Yes, it's a peer-to-peer lending product. You partnered with someone here.
00:30:30
Speaker
Yes, we partner with an RBI regulated NBS and they offer this part, they take care of it. We are partnering with Landbox right now and in the long term, we're also exploring synergies with amazing NBS, peer-to-peer funds as well. They have all skill set to sort of launch their own P2P platform ourselves. But again, right now we're focusing more on the product. So that is why we are playing a plug and play model at this point. Okay.
00:30:54
Speaker
So peer-to-peer use better returns and then you added tax saving options. We are going to add tax saving. It's already integrated. We are going to launch a very soon. Okay. Okay. What else?
00:31:06
Speaker
People started, people wanted automated savings and SIPs because on platform there was manual savings happening. They were like, every time for me to come, just turning on, just put SIPs and put like 10,000, 20,000 rupees, my salaries. That's it. But we got a very interesting, you know, data point also. People were saying that we want automated games.
00:31:28
Speaker
And what they mean by automated game was the first version of Tambola was completely automatic. They don't need to sort of scratch out, like they see if the Tambola tickets keep auto-generating and they wanted to get that feature back. And we got that feature back as well. So with these three things, like it just went, it just exploded after the new version of the products. And of course we made sure changes in UI UX in the new version of the product.
00:31:52
Speaker
So these have been the significant changes and it was more like consumers asking for it rather than me pushing it to the context. So you're writing on version 3, version 1 being the MVP. In version 2, it was not like automatically your savings give you a chance to win. You had to use those savings to play games and then you got a chance to win.
00:32:19
Speaker
Yes, the version 2 was, you see, you're getting fellow tokens. These fellow tokens, you could just expense out to play the game. These tokens had no monetary value at all. It's just to play games, that's it. In these games, they were winning once. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So that is it. But you know, it'll be super unfair for me if I don't tell you.
00:32:42
Speaker
between version 1 and version 2. We launched in October 2021. Slung massively. Slung so massively that we were scared. We were absolutely scared. I was behind all the funding conversations and the entire tech team. We didn't have product designer back then. And it was built very soon, very fast. So of course, a lot of effort went behind it. But when we launched in August 20, existing users went out.
00:33:11
Speaker
New users were saying that we don't understand your product. I don't know what it even does. And people who are investing on the platform, they say that, Hey, like, I don't think I'll come back to the platform again. We are so, so super scared that, you know, like we got such a great validation version one. Like, why are we able to replicate in version two? And that's where we did robust consumer interviews one by one, and then immediately we onboarded a product designer from Bangladesh on freelance.com.
00:33:38
Speaker
And he just made some beautiful-looking new UI with better wireframes. I and Chaudhary are working on the new wireframe test. And then we launched it. Now that actually went up significantly great. We made sure communication is much more. Like one of the things what founders do as a mistake, Akshay, is they try to use fancy normal pleasure, like fancy wordings in the application. That is the biggest learning what I got out of version to us.
00:34:04
Speaker
Make your English level zero. Make sure that for example of pre and post like pre the design, this was the word post you changed it to this.
00:34:13
Speaker
So we were using words like, you know, pricing savings a lot. People, they don't know, they absolutely don't care about pricing. Like, to an investor, he might understand it, but you know, consumers don't understand pricing savings. Like, you know, we were using all the fanciest words. Like, for example, instead of words like, you know, I am waiting, you know, we just, we just use another passive voice version of the word.
00:34:41
Speaker
People just lost it. People just lost it. Like what are these people even talking? So then we made it level zero English, where a kindergarten student can also understand it. It just worked like wonders. It worked like a partner to us. Now that is where we, even till now, if you see any communication channel or communication pillar, what we have, not a single content is written in fancy English. There's the, there's an instruction, what I give to my content team also. No fancy words for our consumers. Very plain, simple English is more than in us. Amazing. Okay.
00:35:10
Speaker
Can you share more such insights that you got in your journey? Like this was a pretty interesting insight about keeping your English simple. Yeah. So this is something that was very recent on Wellington as well. Like one thing what people need to keep in mind is when you're launching your product, make sure that you are ready to handle a wrath of 400,000 consumers. Very simple. And then tell you why.
00:35:35
Speaker
Second, third version of the product, we just built it to a scale of say like 20 to 30,000 people. We could handle it just within as soon as we launched.
00:35:45
Speaker
The app wasn't able to handle the scale. Secondly, you know, Karsham was a success team. It was just two people were just bombarded. And so many things were happening, especially talking about the app. It went to that level that the app became super slow. The servers were not able to manage such huge volume of traction. Now that is where what happened was our readings took a massive hit. From four it fell to 1.1, just because we weren't able to handle it. And there was only one bug which was there in the platform.
00:36:14
Speaker
So this is what I tell every time that whenever you're launching a product, make sure that as soon as you launch it, you are going to be viral out there. It might be super optimistic for you, but make sure you're ready to have, you know, face that optimistic situation because we face that, we literally face that. This is the same thing what it says at CoinX also. That's why the damage control, what had an experience over there is able to use it over here.
00:36:37
Speaker
But that is one learning what I got out of this thing. Secondly... You do have control when your reputation takes a hitch like that. You need to be very transparent. That is what I... I go out and tell very... I made a video also, to be honest. I made a video, put it on YouTube, on our channels. I know that, hey, this is a problem. I'm accepting with all my honesty. Rest assured your money is there. You need to establish a trust to the people because they're putting money, right? If there's something they're buying also, like you tell them, I'll refund the money back.
00:37:05
Speaker
Don't worry about it. So tell them that everything is fine. Assure them. Show your face to the consumers because one of the biggest problem what applications have, especially FinTech applications is they don't have in-person touch. They don't know in what phase they're putting the money. Banks, they can go and quarrel in a bank, but they can't quarrel on the face with the business company, which is tech first. So that is where being transparent is one of the best things what I learned from CoinX and that's what I do email over here.
00:37:33
Speaker
I want to understand how you earn. What is your monetization? Very simple. Right now, with the two asset classes, what we have, we earn percentage commissions. And especially with the savings product, what we have, it's going to be a completely, you know, percentage commission model of what we have.
00:37:50
Speaker
But in the long run, we are buying towards becoming a newer banking application in the long run. And savings is the first of the products what we have. The second part of what we're going to get into is savings back credits. The third one is micro insurance. And these will sort of give us new sources of revenue. But another new source of revenue is sort of opened up and which are going to explore very soon is several B2C and D2C brands started reaching out to us saying that your PG resonates with our PG and you won't pay the rewards. We will come in and sponsor the rewards on your path.
00:38:21
Speaker
Like what's happening on credit, for example, like, you know, they have a game going on a same boat or some premium company comes and say that, Hey, like this is how you just, you know, play the game. Now, we also did not think of, to be honest, like, uh, we got this message on LinkedIn through one of the company and say that, Hey, like, I just want to explore this and I was like, okay, let's give a shot. And that is where, uh, this new revenue model is going to open up very big time in the long.
00:38:46
Speaker
So that is like the model that you are moving towards in terms of creating a cohort of Gen Z. And for that cohort of Gen Z, you are handling all their financial services needs. So what we're trying to do is, especially for Gen Z and young millennials 21 to 25, we want to be their first fintech application. We want to make finance fun, exciting, and rewarding for these people. That is what this TG wants. And they have very specific needs we want to meet it.
00:39:16
Speaker
Our credit is celebrating credit and healthy spending and healthy credit repayment. We want to celebrate healthy banking and healthy finances and healthy savings.
Targeting Gen Z and Millennials
00:39:26
Speaker
That is what we want to do for the 21 to 25 year old Gen Z and young millennials. Yeah. Okay. Very interesting.
00:39:33
Speaker
Before we come to this cohort, I want to take it a little bit more into the monetization and how it works. Your gross revenue is the commissions. And then you would be paying out rewards, right? So what is that ratio? Like what percentage of your gross revenue do you pay out? So this is something which we have cracked. This is a great thing which we cracked.
00:40:02
Speaker
Even right now, you know, we don't pay a lot of rewards at all. There's a trade secret as to how exactly we're able to give rewards out to consumers. And that is something which I would be able to reveal with you only off record.
00:40:18
Speaker
See, one thing is in the long run, we won't be paying any rewards. You know, for example, there is one reward which is there on our platform. If something wins, we will be giving one crore, but you know, like we have discovered something where, you know, like the probability of winning is low.
00:40:34
Speaker
Even if there's a probability of winning every week also, we figured out a system in such a way that we don't pay that one growth. We have things in place. Like insurance?
00:40:51
Speaker
I'll tell you, like very small chunk goes out. Like for example, 10,000 of the rewards every week, it goes from our pocket. That goes as a marketing spend only for us. It is very simple, like the cashbacks, et cetera, et cetera, goes. But for the holy grail rewards, we have some processes set up in place. Like I was using them in some sort of a.
00:41:13
Speaker
reinsurance mechanism, maybe not that exact word. That's a good way also to be honest. Works like that. The one which you're saying also the insurance model. We have to explore it to be honest. But you know, is our Indian insurance companies insuring such sort of models need to see that. But yeah, it's a good thing which you can potentially explore as well.
00:41:35
Speaker
So essentially you're spending like what percentage of your commission on this rewards? More than more than talking as five percentage of commissioners rewards. We have a monthly weekly budget of 10,000 rupees. That is what we give out as rewards to the consumers. That's it.
00:41:54
Speaker
We realized that this quantum of rewards, what do you give? It is ample enough for us to redeem consumers to make them feel excited and come back and invest and save more on the platform also. If you thought of give more rewards, there's another problem associated with it.
00:42:10
Speaker
People get used to higher rewards, and once we make it lower, they feel that, oh, you're not giving me rewards anymore. Like I don't want to take names or platforms, but not of people who started giving more rewards initially, they eventually throttle down and people churn out and we don't want to be even happening. So we're setting a realistic expectation.
00:42:27
Speaker
We say that, hey, some games are super easy to achieve. And we give another thing also, even if you don't give rewards, we give them Tambola tickets. Now, Tambola tickets have the capacity for them to earn big. Now that is exciting them. So that is where we are making sure the balance is set for these people to get gratified, but at the same time, not gratified to that extent that they keep coming and asking for more and more rewards, which might potentially result in churn if we don't offer.
00:42:53
Speaker
So Jan, do you also spend on customer acquisition or do you prefer to spend on rewards instead of customer acquisition? We spend on rewards as a part and as a customer acquisition metric also. And right now, on an upward note of 70% have come in through referrals. We have a very amazing referral program that works phenomenally great for us. That is where we get the remaining 30% is coming in completely through the performance marketing, what we started doing in recent times.
00:43:22
Speaker
We're also setting up a lot of amazing go-to-market strategies from the next. I mean, we already started doing it, but yes, we have performance catch also coming. What are the go-to-market strategies?
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, first, I don't want to sort of talk about the reference, but secondly, performance is the game which are going to play very big time in the coming days. Secondly, for a very short change, we work with influencers. It gave us the viral effect what we wanted. That is the second thing. Third, we are partnering with financial advisors. Now with financial advisors, the beauty is they have
00:43:55
Speaker
direct consumers within their immediate reach, like these people who are concerned other people for other financial products. We partnered with a lot of such financial advisors. Now that is the third GTM what we have. Now the fourth GTM what we're going to have is we are going ahead and partnering with a lot of these HR communities and even HR, I mean HRMS tools through which we are going to cross-sell our products. But the full agreement behind which, what we are trying targeting employees.
00:44:20
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Because right now, the average age of an investing user is 24.5, is making an average $750,000 on fellow. And these people are coming and asking us, these better products of, give me tax saving funds, give me better return funds, and they're asking for credit cards and buy now, buy later options also. So that is where we realized that this TG is getting attracted very quickly.
00:44:43
Speaker
But the fifth GTM, what we are hoping to attract and have it on a table in the long run is we want to get potential partnerships directly with banks so that we can tap onto the distribution market. Banks have a very structured distribution ecosystem. Now, once we partner with a bank offering their products on a platform,
00:45:03
Speaker
we have access to their entire distribution network. They can come and, you know, they can go and sell our product. For example, someone says that, hey, I want to buy a XYZ mutual fund. The distributor will say that, hey, instead of investing directly on our bank application, you can go and invest in the same product. You'll get better. Exciting to watch. Okay. Interesting.
00:45:23
Speaker
I'm gonna zoom in on these a bit. For reference, do you give some rewards? Like, how do you push reference? We give them 20 rupees worth of digital code and we give them 200 selo tokens. Right now we're also giving in tambola tickets. But users would be able to withdraw their
00:45:44
Speaker
winnings and referral rewards, only if it has crossed 200 rupees. And to get to the mark of 200 rupees, they need to have healthy savings. They need to have those rewards. So that's associated with it.
00:45:59
Speaker
Okay. Got it. And for financial advisors that you would share the commission with them if they give you their customers. We have a specific structure. We try and test out different, different structures with them. For example, with few, we told that whatever EMs we're getting through you.
00:46:15
Speaker
small percentage goes to you. With few, we have cookie cutter, you know, activation fee model with them. These are the two things which we are experimenting right now to see what works best for us in the long run. Like where exactly we're getting better activations with less money going out some more pocket. So this is the experimentations what we have.
00:46:34
Speaker
But why would a financial advisor want to reduce his AUM? He'll reduce his AUM if he gives his customers to you, right? So these financial advisors, they themselves partner with, for example, with other banking or, you know, AMC companies right now. AMC company is giving say 0.2 or 0.3 or whatever. I'm just throwing numbers. We'll say that, hey, I'll give you 0.5% more than what your existing AUM.
00:47:01
Speaker
person is giving comment you know sell our products to them at the end of the day and the same product does the application is different so that is how we are giving a specific by virtue of your size you're able to get better margins exactly exactly we're able to get better margins at this point of time that is the only reason why you know we're able to do this at this point of time okay but during the initial days of acquisition also we are making sure that everyone in the ecosystem
00:47:26
Speaker
feels healthy while partnering with Selo Aswin. So that's something which you want to establish with these people. The bank distribution model, again, my concern remains the same that, wouldn't the bank want that AUM instead of shifting it to you? At the end of the day, the AUM is getting into the bank only, right?
00:47:49
Speaker
So, we are the shooter at the end of the day. On the back end, their product is only running, right? So, one of the biggest... An ICICI bank customer would be sold an ICICI mutual fund product, basically. Okay. And so, this is what banks want. Banks want their products to be sold, and in return, their EMs growing up more and more.
00:48:09
Speaker
How it is happening? I mean, is there sales and business teams game at the end of the day? Now, if it is happening through fellow or it's happening through the direct product, it is totally fine because at the end of this, the businesses getting into the pockets of the bank, their agents are only growing. So if they're able to send the product way better through our platform, then they would say, why not? Now that is where all the banks are having an entire open banking division and startup acquisition division.
00:48:36
Speaker
where I started a partnership and acquisition division. They're just going and partnering because for a bank to build a product like Celo, I mean, I'm not demeaning that they are the ones who are running the ecosystem as well. Exactly. It takes at least like one, two years to get an approval to build such sort of thing and get it out in the market. Now that is the beauty of startups. We execute it and we just partner with them.
00:48:59
Speaker
So that is why banks wouldn't, or any of the print tech NBFCs, sorry, finance NBFCs would be, you know, looking forward to partner with, you know, companies like us. Okay. So you said you have 750,000 users currently. Yes. These are all like users who've invested, at least not everyone invest, you know, all these people on an upward note of 40 to 45% of the people invest on the application. We have active gamers on the platform.
00:49:26
Speaker
You know, like that is what you're trying to explore also. Like these people are super excited with the games. And what we see is with the initial free token, whenever a country went onwards, we give them like 203 fellow tokens. Now we are seeing that these 203 fellow tokens is helping us get them activated in the long run. Like there's a specific cohort of people who would take time to come onto the platform. So eventually they're coming onto the platform. So that is turning out to be beneficial for us.
00:49:53
Speaker
And how many, what's your number of users who've made an investment? The exact number of users who have made the investment is on an upward notice.
00:50:06
Speaker
We're speaking of 100k to 160k. I mean, I can give you the exact number of poses. But yeah, that's the number what we're seeing at this point. Okay. Okay. Got it. Interesting. There are other companies going after this cohort of young adults. So it's a very attractive PGE. Yes.
00:50:24
Speaker
For example, FAMPY also wants to be a Neovat. And they started with payments as their entry product. But I believe JAR also would be in a similar category after this cohort. So what is your strategy versus them? How are you different from them? Or what do you see the market evolving into?
Market Differentiation Strategy
00:50:47
Speaker
In my view and this is my take also that, Phampe and Jar target two different cohorts altogether. Phampe is targeting T's like for within the college only and of course, they started with spending and then right now they're getting into savings. I mean, they want to be the new bank for teenagers and college students, that is their teaching.
00:51:11
Speaker
Now JAR is someone which we sort of close, I mean, look closely or take inspirations from and admire as well. JAR is of course trying to turn out to be the first savings application through speed change investment and even if they turn out to be a wealth management tool or
00:51:27
Speaker
you know, hook them into this thing and start crossing other products also. So that is where we see Jart to be a close competitor or a close company working directly targeting the same audience because the age group, the demographic matches especially.
00:51:44
Speaker
What they're doing is, again, you know, it's for a different set of people. So we don't see them or, you know, intersecting. Of course, the same question we get asked a lot is why not doing what you guys are doing, because communication is something which excites them a lot. And that is where, you know, we got the data point that of the total users, 15% of our users are from 18 to 20 age group who are in colleges.
00:52:10
Speaker
Those people are saying that we play games a lot and through your application, we are even ending up saving. So, but the ticket size of saving is super small from it. Super, super small because teams don't have money to save. They have money to spend because the family, you know, funds the wallets and all that is where spending is more over this. That is why it makes sense to first launch a spending product and then come to a savings product.
00:52:33
Speaker
Right. So that's the difference. We are saving first to come. Okay. But I guess eventually the FAMPY cohort would be the kind of cohort. I mean, once they grow up, you know, like three years down the line, they would be... Of course. That is where I feel that FAMPY can have the potential to explore or widen up its products.
00:52:54
Speaker
You know, with the current product, maybe there's a potential to an associated, you know, like after deal, what now? Because financial needs of a consumer grows. For example, my first product was my bank account, my college bank account. Then I wanted to buy a mobile phone for myself. I started taking an EMI for it.
00:53:14
Speaker
Then I became aware of my family. I started taking insurance. So the requirements gross. So that is where either Fampic can build it or Fampic can partner with another company and you know, potentially start getting these synergies done to offer those products to these companies. So Fampic is a norm to admit that actually these teams are not monetizable, but in a couple of years they will be more monetizable. Undoubtedly.
00:53:42
Speaker
Now we're talking about the country where, you know, we have the highest Gen Z population, highest in population, and we have data. At least from spending, we can make money at this point of time. And eventually, if we get the funnel right and offer the right product to them, of course, things could be done over there. I'm pretty sure that company like Sam because even Apudo, which is also backed by YC, they're exploring this. So we also very closely monitor the space because the Fiji has sort of opened up. But again,
00:54:11
Speaker
Our biggest concentration is towards salaried professionals within 21 to 25 role each group. And that is where our efforts are going into at this point. Okay. And JAR's promise is convenient. Like they're making it convenient for you to save. Yes. It's like paid less saving. Yeah. And how do they make that happen? Like you pay through JAR. Like JAR has a UPI payment system or something. So what JAR does is you need to set up auto pay.
00:54:40
Speaker
And you need to give access to your messages. And whenever you make a spending, say you spent 98 rupees, it rounds off to the nearest whole number, which was like 100. And the extra 2 rupees is saved in district code. So that is how JAR works. So without knowing, while spending, you're ending up saving. So that's what happens with JAR.
00:55:07
Speaker
Okay. So Jan is playing on convenience factor. Exactly. You're playing on engagement. Like you want people to get engaged with the app, same with the by-product of engagement. Yep. That is where the consumer started asking convenience, right? People started asking auto-save feature on our platform. I mean, SIBs, technically. Though we are rolling out SIBs in the next two weeks. So that is all. SIBs and goals, they're saying something which you're rolling out.
00:55:32
Speaker
So, through this convenience factor is also getting sorted. Our problem statement or one of the things what we wanted to solve at a very good way is making people get hooked and interested in the finance ecosystem for a long term. You know, finance is such a thing that it is, it is never intuition based. It is something which is will based. When I say intuition based, like no one will just look like a big hoarding.
00:55:57
Speaker
say and come and invest on the platform and get into finance. It is something which comes out of their intuition. But people, this is something what we found out of our consumer research was people find several reasons to not get into finance. They don't find reasons for other behavioral patterns, but for finance, especially we found this behavioral pattern. Now that is where what we wanted to do was let's offer something which they get excited, but start
00:56:24
Speaker
baking in finance into it. So that is how gaming is turning out to be an activation retention factor for us. And in between, we want to bring in convenience also, which consumers started asking for us.
00:56:34
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. You talked about saving the fact credit product that you will launch next. What is that? Very simple. Say that actually you have 5,000, sorry, 50,000 rupees saved on your platform. Taking that into consideration, we will be offering a partial amount of it, like 50 to 60% of it as a credit line within the application, through which you could start building credit scores. Now, one of the problems in what these people have on the platform is
00:57:04
Speaker
They don't know how to build a healthy credit score at all. They don't know how to get the first evidence earlier, how to get the first credit cards or anything related to it. Now, this will be a good segue for us to get into the second behavioral patterns, because a lot of people ask us for credit lines, but they don't know. We ask them, what is your credit score? They know that we don't know our credit scores. Why don't you give me a simple option where I can just go and check my credit score.
00:57:29
Speaker
So this will be the first segue and looking into this, we can start offering higher credit lines also to people in the law. Because data point what we found is 87% of our consumers don't have insurances. Now that is something which is exciting us and micro insurance is a space which is booming significantly. What are micro insurance products? What is micro insurance? Micro insurance is something like in the past, at least in the past.
00:57:54
Speaker
If you want to buy an insurance for yourself, it's a lump sum payment, what do you have to do? Like you say 10,000, 20,000, that's it. Now microinsurance, the beauty of microinsurance is daily one rupee or daily two rupees or two rupees. It gets you into that not so well. It's like, you know, SIPs for, you know, insurance. It is securing your future. It is not making you sound super expensive. You're spending very, very minute amount this day.
00:58:19
Speaker
For example, one of the best examples of micro insurance is what Rapido does. Like whenever you travel, it ensures you for one rupee. So people are saying, oh, it's one rupee only, right? Let me insure myself. So people love that. If I say that 10,000 rupees for all your Rapido rides, they'll say, no, I'm not going to. If I say one rupee for your one ride, then love it. So it was a very baffling factor. You know, data point for us that 87.0 consumers had only insurance is what their company was offering.
00:58:49
Speaker
We thought that this is a space which has to be tapped because we had interviews during peak COVID season. And unfortunately they didn't have insurance to meet their, you know, unfortunate situations. So they became much more aware of insurance. So that is the, that is something which we are exploring. Okay.
00:59:06
Speaker
For giving credit, there's a lot of... I mean, RBI is putting a lot of regulatory barriers to that, right? How will you cross those hurdles? I'm actually glad that, you know, RBI is putting these hurdles. And I'll tell you why. It is for the benefit of two people over here.
00:59:29
Speaker
First end consumers, end consumers, you know, for example, there's so many lending apps which are going on right now. They just go to Play Store. If you see of the top 100 finance, top 250, 20 finance apps, you'll see it's crowded by lending applications. Now, people blindly go and select it without looking into the terms and conditions, unfortunately, and they get some of the other mis-benefited out of it. So, regulations are trying to promote healthy ecosystem.
00:59:57
Speaker
Now, what will happen for businesses who are trying to get into this? This will help only...
01:00:04
Speaker
Founders are people who could, who are mature enough to run the business, going and running the business as well. So that is where it is benefiting the ecosystem. Yes. I understand the challenges are turning out to be super, like every day you're waking up to a new regulation, but at the same time, they're trying to refine the ecosystem because we are the highest adapters of fintech revolution across the world. We are adapting fintech technology way more than any other country across the globe.
01:00:28
Speaker
with such great penetration, such massive growth happening, these regulations are super, super important. Now where exactly our skill set comes into picture is, I was working into the lending piece for a very long period of time. Even during the early days of Flovis, we knew that we wanted to get into lending. So that is where the closer level, grander experience of working with regulations come into picture. And that is where we
01:00:54
Speaker
are confident that irrespective of however the situation is, we'll be able to handle it. How will your credit product work? Will you transfer that money to the bank or will you have some sort of a payment mechanism?
Future Offerings and Regulatory Challenges
01:01:06
Speaker
I feel that physical credit cards are going to die in the long run.
01:01:10
Speaker
But again, you know, I mean, very, very, very less number of credit cards, which are out in circulation compared to total potential people as well. But it's just trying to see what could be the source of it. Like, will it be the form of a payment network? Will it be the form of a card? Is it you, I've been talking about your pay based credit.
01:01:26
Speaker
or are we talking credit directly getting into the bank? That is one model which you want to see what is the best way possible. We just started talking with a lot of banks for this potential product, but we are in conversations to get the final product in the best way possible.
01:01:42
Speaker
Do you need to raise more funds or are you able to grow with the existing fundraise and revenues you're making? Just with one million dollars what we raised, we were able to
01:02:00
Speaker
have such a great runway and that is where, you know, mine and Shari's experience of being frugal yet getting better returns sort of comes into picture. Now with the $4 million, what we raise, we have a very great significant runway where we'll also be in a capacity to sort of launch the next product also.
01:02:17
Speaker
So at this point of time, yes, of course, fundraising is a never-ending process for a founder. You always stop with the investors. So that is always happening, but at the end of the day, we will raise at the right time possible. But with the existing capital, we have a very great runway. That is why we are one of those few companies who are still hiring irrespective of the climate, however it is out there, because these existing products, these exciting products are something that you want to be done at a very, very fast fashion.
01:02:45
Speaker
What's your advice to founders and funders based on what you learned? Very simple. Never say no to more money. That is the first thing. It's stress running out of your mind. That's it. No one dreamt of such a winter also coming in. So it always kept me on the edge. Glad that, you know, you know, business spoke for it. It's going to be able to close in some very, very founder friendly investors as well. But this is the first. Never say no to more money. Second.
01:03:15
Speaker
This is another big mistake. I didn't see a lot of founders doing it and asking me as well. Till series A also, be fine with valuations. Because once your business works out well, the next round valuations will speak for itself. For example, a lot of founders try to go for bigger valuations. They try to get, you know... They don't want to dilute, basically.
01:03:40
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. See, there are two things associated with it. There are two set of founders. One, founders who are valuing their equity, which is great. I want every founder to value their equities. You own it, you absolutely own it. That is why. But some people, the few set of founders who say that, oh, I want to reset this valuation, it helps me out. Oh yeah, for headlines.
01:04:01
Speaker
That is not required. Trust me, that actually turns out to be in the other way around. Because investors are, VCs are investors, they also want to make good returns. If you are closing at a higher valuation right now, they don't see whether it is coming in the future round. So these are the two things what I would say in terms of raising. But the third thing what I also want to say is,
01:04:21
Speaker
get angel investors on board, get the best angel investors on board. Right now, I'm super glad that we have some of the best angel investors because they help us, they work along with us in building a business. Like they're immediately reachable. Of course, Mises do help you in the best way possible, whatever they can. They're very closely associated with you. But in my experience, what I noticed was angel investors
01:04:44
Speaker
are there to promote the ecosystem very loudly. They're having CXOs, CEOs who solve those problems in the past and they know how to solve it. So don't hesitate or even if you're subscribed, keep a small kitty open up for good angel investors onboarded because they will help you out in building the business. So these are three suggestions of feedback what I give for someone who is looking out for raising.
01:05:11
Speaker
So you were part of an entrepreneur first, which is like an incubator? Yes. It's more like a talent investor. That is what they call them. It's an incubator for sure, but it's a talent investor program. So that is what helped you get the first set of agents. Because I believe the first one is the most difficult one. Once you've... Oh yes, yes. I guess eventually EF is able to...
01:05:38
Speaker
established the mark that we are funding some of the best companies, some of the best founders to be honest. And once we were able to close in the seat check from EF through EF Connects, back then Isha Tiwari was her partner and she enters a lot with the common connections she introduced and Bala Partha Salty and a couple of them came through there.
01:06:02
Speaker
Then on the EF demo day, we were able to open a couple of good VCs and through their VC connects, then they introduced us to ASNIR and others, and we were able to get them onboarded with us in this journey.
Role of Angel Investors
01:06:16
Speaker
So that's how we were able to get some quality angel investors. I don't know, quality is the right word. The reason why I say this is the level of inputs, what they gave us during the initial days, I even implement them today when I get some any sort of crisis situation.
01:06:30
Speaker
That is why I feel that their expertise of being CEOs and CXOs helped us a lot in our business at this point of time. Amazing. So you did not know your co-founder from before, right? How does that work out? I tried the revelation approach for six months. It did not work out for me because apparently, not apparently, back then all my close friends were at different stage in life. A couple of them were getting married, a couple of them
01:06:58
Speaker
I had a hyping job and they were like, I just don't want to get out of the comfort zone right now back then. So finding a founder was super difficult. That is where the director of products of Floviz, the previous company, Floviz and Coinix, he told that, give a shot at Entrepreneur First because he himself was from Entrepreneur First Singapore.
01:07:17
Speaker
And you know that you were short at it, and I came over here. The first thing what EF solves for you is getting those people who are all in for building a business. So that is sorted for me. I know that these people are in for building a business. Intent is already street for me. Intent is already established over there. Now for me, it is only two things. One, does he or she can build a business to the scale what we want? And secondly,
01:07:44
Speaker
Can I, can this person be my friend and can we, can we have personal synergies? It is very important to have personal synergies with your founder because you're going to see your, each other's faces every day. You're going to, I'm not even kidding. You might be spending more time with him than your partner in real life.
01:08:02
Speaker
This is the first thing what I wanted to validate. I spoke with Shaurya. The EFRs are like who are your potential people who you want to partner with. Shaurya was the first name what I wrote when they asked me for three names. So I wrote Shaurya because he comes from fintech band. He worked at Blackrock. He was sending financial products for large corporate clients. So I knew he was the right guy for me. It was all about personal synergy.
01:08:28
Speaker
So initially we were beer buddies. We are partnering with every person, but we weren't teaming up together. Then we both come to a finance background. So let's give a short, let's give a short for a few weeks. Let's see how will this work out professionally. Person's energy is so established. Let's see it professionally.
01:08:45
Speaker
Now that is where, as I told you, we kept very simple targets for ourselves. I need to get the license, you need to get the product done because that is where he'd be validating my business expertise and I'll be validating his technical expertise. It was all about building, I'm executing it. So that is how I got the validation that it's not just a good co-founder, but we can also be good friends who could build a company together.
01:09:10
Speaker
And that brings us to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to this show? I'd love to hear your feedback about it. Do you have your own startup ideas? I'd love to hear them. Do you have questions for any of the guests that you heard about in this show? I'd love to get your questions and pass them on to the guests. Write to me at adatthepodium.in. That's adatthepodium.in.