Patience, persistence and passion, the three qualities that define the Indian farmer, are the same that are needed for start-ups to succeed, says Bharat Ravuri, Founder and CEO of MintZip, an artificial intelligence-driven financial companion. The financial services veteran of 25 years and a lover of farming, tells BusinessLine he is striving to create an anxiety-free environment around money. Excerpts:
You have an interesting financial product, different from the fintech products out there in the market. Tell us about it.
Most people today struggle with making the right financial decisions. Also, given the change in communication styles in today’s WhatsApp world, people want financial advice on-demand. The success of fintech has resulted in people’s money being distributed across different platforms, thus making it difficult for them to get a handle on their money – from an end-to-end perspective.
Today’s digital consumerism has made spending ₹1 extremely easy. Saving ₹1 is not. MISA (an acronym for My Income, Savings and Aspirations), our product, has been built to address these problems. It has the intelligence to think about money for the customer and tell them what they need to do at every step along the way. It simplifies financial decisions, making it easy for the common man to comprehend the required elements and make a qualified decision. The interface is a simple voice/chat bot, and the customer can ask any questions to MISA and it would give personalised insights. It has been built using a powerful trifecta of deep neural networks, behavioural economics and proprietary financial algorithms. Behavioural elements enable the customer to take timely action.
Also, MISA is able to execute seamlessly at the backend. It can help customers optimise their spends, increase savings, make on-time payments, make intelligent investments, take right insurance cover, reduce loans or give out loans – depending on the need of the customer and save taxes (includes comprehensive tax advisory).
In short, MISA is about giving out personalised solutions to customers to improve their overall financial health. It is a one-stop-shop for the financial needs of the customer.
You say the product can help customers optimise their spends, increase savings, make on-time payments, etc. Please explain a real-life situation.
Today, digital consumerism has made spending so easy that people are unable to save. Then they feel guilty about not saving. MISA enables multiple saving models. One such example is Guilt Free Spending where the user can define to save a percentage of the spend (as per their wish).
From then on, every time the user spends money, this percentage of money automatically gets saved, and at the end of the month, this accumulated savings will be presented to the customer and recommendations would be made on how best to deploy the money.
Another example: Most people are not sure if they have the appropriate insurance cover. This cover is often determined based on conversations with friends/family as against a scientific route. MISA evaluates user finances, their current life insurance covers, and recommends to the customer the right life insurance cover that they would need.
Your product is now being used by the staff of certain corporates. What has been their experience?
Companies are starting to focus on the financial wellness of their employees. Research shows that many employees worry about their future financial state and this causes distraction at work. Research also shows people who worry about finances tend to jump jobs quickly. So, companies are learning the importance of financial wellness of their employees. However, most solutions existing in financial wellness are training programmes. Employers are not able to offer tools that can help employees manage their finances better. That’s where we come in. We offer our solution as a financial wellness tool for employees. The intelligence that we built into our tool does most of the thinking required for the employees and guides them through all their financial decisions.
HR heads who have seen our product are very excited about its capabilities and are referring us to other HR heads in their network. We have also received good feedback from employees on our product.
You are currently funded yourself. Are you looking for funds for expansion?
We have funded the product development ourselves as it is important that we take time to build a high-quality, end-to-end product. It’s very important to build trust with the customers by delivering a seamless product. Now that we have our product in the market, we are in talks to raise funds.
Walk us through your expansion plans.
We have a three-pronged expansion strategy for the product. First is to roll out our financial wellness product to corporates to improve the financial health of their employees.
Second is to expand our voice/chat bot to vernacular, enabling us to reach out to a broader user base.
Third is to offer our most advanced voice/chat financial companion to banking customers in international markets.
You come from an agrarian family, moved to the corporate world and did well. But agriculture is your passion, and so you invested in a farm. Tell us about it, and how you have used these lessons in your start-up experience.
Twenty-five years in the corporate world has taught me a lot of leadership lessons. But farming is a very different challenge in itself. While corporate leaders have most things within their control, an average farmer has 90 per cent of the elements — vagaries of nature, unavailability of human resources, lack of scientific insights on availability of water/mineral sources in soil and fluctuating market prices — outside his control.
A farmer needs patience, persistence and, more importantly, the passion to succeed. Those are the same qualities that are required for a start-up professional who is going against the grain to build a new product/business to make a difference to the world.