Startup Circle: How is Finin providing a hyper-personalized neo-banking platform?

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 management suite. Here's where Finin comes in.

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. The company was founded by Suman Gandham and Sudheer Maram who are both from the finance industry. Read Suman Gandham, Founder, talk about the startup and its offerings.

What is Finin about?

We have created an easy-to-do onboarding sequence that lets you create a Finin Savings account in under 2 minutes with minimum KYC. Once a user creates the SBM powered bank account, we issue and deliver a VISA Finin debit to the user. While the card arrives, the virtual card has a lot of functions which allow 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 full view of all transactions and balance in one-app view. This in fact is a very sought feature as per our users.

The app also gives you the functionality to create monthly budgets basis which nudges 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 personalised 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 the feature - Round off transactions. That means, when a user opts for it, the app deducts an extra amount as per the users' preference and save aside for the Goal. This is akin to finding money in the pocket of your old jeans.

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. We also engage with users via blogs and newsletters to enable financial literacy.

Tell us about the team.

Finin Team Photograph

We are based out of Bangalore, India and we were founded in February 2019. We went live in December 2020 as the first consumer neobank in India. Our 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 we are solving.

How did you come up with the idea?

I have been working in the Fintech space for a few years now. I am a 2x entrepreneur turned Fintech VC. During my time in Europe, I noticed an emerging trend in the neobanking space. I was always aware of the banking landscape in India and its shortcomings. Thus, I decided to move back and create a ripple in this industry.

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 that most banks offer are strikingly similar. That is, 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.

Our neobanking platform bridges these gaps using technology and helps people develop a better relationship with money by simplifying antiquated banking services.

How are you transforming the banking sector?

Banking institutions lack personalisation 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 all your money management. 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 you a full scape view of your finances but also guide you into financial planning, discipline and independence.

What is your business/market growth?

While we were running an early user waitlist, we had over 11000+ users on it.  As of now, we have over 6000+ active accounts created. We are also on an iOS beta currently with over 400+ users on it.

Has 2020 been a good year at Finin? What are your plans?

2020 was a fantastic year for Finin despite the pandemic and lockdown. We accelerated the product development and user acquisition in that year and launched the first-ever consumer-facing neobank in the country; which is savings and goals driven completely. We have a lot of feature rollouts planned soon. Mutual funds, investments, lending and credit cards are a few of them.

Funding

We raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A from Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures and are in the process of raising our Series A as of right now.