Delhi-based FinTech BankSathi raised $200,000 in a seed funding round from a group of angel investors.
The round included investors in the likes of Dinesh Godara, founder of TREAD, ex-Unacademy, Rajendra Lora, founder of Freshokartz, Anuj Ahuja and Aditya Talwar, co-founders of Studybase among others.
The funding will be utilised on product development, team building and executing marketing and growth plan.
With the aim to promote the role of financial advisors and help them in decision making, BankSathi will help them in buying retail loans, credit card and insurance products through its advisor app.
Founded in January 2020 by Jitendra Dhaka, Sandeep Choudhary and former banker Himanshu Pujari, the startup is focusing majorly on Tier-II and beyond cities after noticing a higher demand in these areas.
Boasting over 5000 advisors across 700 pin codes of India, the firm has earned a total advisor income of Rs 75 lakh ($102,000) to date. Currently, it has 45 products from 15 financial institutes in its bucket. Going forward, it aims to achieve one million advisors and 150 products of 50 financial institutions ready to distribute through BankSathi app by the end of this financial year, it said.
Furthermore, it plans to create five million advisors with 500 products of 100 financial institutions available via its platform in the next three years. It will do so by raising another round of investment by the middle of this year, it added.
Dhaka detailed that despite being independent for 74 years and housing thousands of financial institutions, India still has a penetration of 4% insurance.
“Most of the Indians believe in taking advice from experts around them, this is the reason 75% of retail financial products are sold in India through authorised advisors/agents. India has two million active advisors in the insurance industry and 50% of retail assets in India are sold through DSA and connectors, which are again in millions,” Dhaka added.
According to Choudhary, the pandemic catalysed the digitalisation process in the country forcing people to look for tech-driven financial products. He said, “Covid-19 and the lockdown has brought the technology at least five years ahead and buying behaviour of customers has also changed a lot. This secular shift is going to help BankSathi a lot.”
Pujari added that the ongoing pandemic has brought “an urgent requirement of a technology-based solution, which can help financial advisers earn more via trustable and easy to use platform.”
Commenting on the financial sector, Godara said, “there is a market which is not yet tapped properly; and India is in the process of witnessing a huge shift in the FinTech space, as the major reselling of products is going to be smartphone-driven, which is majorly going to be through social commerce.”
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