Kaler wants to serve 50+m customers in 5 years
Bangalore-based social commerce platform BankSathi said the recently raised US$4 million will be used to invest in high-calibre employees and accelerate the development of new products and technology.
In addition, the organisation will invest resources toward growing both its agent network and geographic reach into new regions, said the Fintech Start-up in a release on 9 Jan 2023.
The funding came from Kotak Securities, Lets Venture, We Founder Circle, Hem Securities and IPV (Inflection Point Ventures). It also received funding from Recur Club, Liquiloans, Sunil Singhania (Abakkus), Kunal Shah (CRED), Dr. Ritesh Malik (Innov8), Kailash Biyani (Asian Markets), Mukul Rastogi & Bhaswat Agarwal (ClassPlus), Varun Alagh (MamaEarth), Sameer Rastogi (India Juris), Manish Dabkara (EKI Energy), Dinesh Godara (3X founder) and Mukund Modi (MS Fincap).
BankSathi is a social commerce fintech platform to empower consumers’ financial life by providing right financial products access to last mile users. It uses priority algorithms to recommend financial products to advisors based on the customer’s profile and past transactions. This helps both customers and advisors receive recommendations for the best products.
“With this funding, we will be able to expand product, technology and distribution network at a faster pace,” said Jitendra Dhaka, Founder & CEO.
“People generally rely on their networks for recommendations, particularly when it comes to significant financial services.
“As a result, our distribution network of vetted agents provides the much-needed security to customers. We’re keen to make a big contribution in the Prime Minister’s mission ‘Develop India by 2047’ by increasing financial penetration through our tech empowered financial advisors.”
Kotak Securities Limited MD & CEO Jaideep Hansraj added, “Today small and mid-sized financial advisors and micro-entrepreneurs are not able to directly work with financial institutions.
“BankSathi is enabling these micro-entrepreneurs to sell and earn extra income through selling financial products online and making themselves financially independent and educated.”
BankSathi makes use of its network of agents to make recommendations for right financial products to its customers in Tier 2, Tier 3 cities and remote locations.
The distribution technique used by the start-up provides product suggestions in multiple financial categories including bank accounts, credit cards, loans, demat accounts and insurance policies. The lack of trust that exists in India is the primary barrier to the country’s adoption of financial products.
“We have an endeavour to empower 10 million financial advisors and serve 50+ million customers in the next five years and we are on track to achieve the same,” BankSathi CTO and Co-founder Sandeep Kaler elaborated.
BankSathi is partnered with 60+ financial institutions, including HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, IDFC First, SBI, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Bank of Baroda. Recently IRDAI approved an insurance licence to BankSathi to offer a more diverse portfolio of financial products to the customers. This start-up is on its way to bringing the most affordable insurance options for customers in tier 2 and less developed regions. fiinews.com
