Three co-founders – none of them a CEO, COO or a CTO. They go by no titles and are working to build an app that can help women manage their finances -- be it savings, investment or planning.
It started in 2020 when Chaitra Chidanand decided to do something on her own to help women manage money. The first person she reached out to was Shinjini Kumar, Country Manager of Citi’s Consumer Banking at the time, and former CEO of Paytm Payments Bank.
Meanwhile, Aditi Sholapurkar, who knew Kumar through her time at Paytm, was looking for ways to share her knowledge to help women make the right investment choices. Based out of Singapore, she was working with payment infrastructure player Nium, when the pandemic struck. That is when Kumar called her about SALT.
All three of them came from workplaces with either a man at the helm or as a co-founder. In fact, Chidanand’s exit from Simpl was bitter and she has moved the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) against the company, its co-founder Nityanand Sharma and shareholders, alleging that her shareholding was deliberately diluted and she was kept in the dark about the restructuring.
With this new beginning, Chidanand, Kumar and Sholapurkar decided to do things differently. The co-founders interviewed 500 women to understand their relationship with money and built a money personality quiz, the results of which helped improve the product they were about to bring to the market in a few months.
They had a tough start, getting people to see how the money personality test will, in fact, yield the right results, and, more importantly, how the startup can function perfectly well without any one of them taking the title of a CEO. Currently, the app has 1 lakh people on its waitlist.
In an hour-long interview with Moneycontrol, the three co-founders took us through the plans for the app and the learnings in the process. Edited excerpts.
Starting with the app, is there a waitlist? How will the final product work? How will it help people manage finances better?
Chaitra Chidanand: What we learned through the 500-odd interviews is that one of the problems everybody faces is “I want to get started, but I don't know where to start”.
A second problem is, “I am doing some things but I don't really know whether I'm doing it right or not doing enough.”
All around, we saw that lack of confidence to either get started or to do more or to know whether they're doing enough.
The diagnosis was that the industrialisation of finance has taken away intuition from money. It made you believe that these are very complex decisions, and you have to rely on somebody else to tell you what to do. Or you have to have very deep industry expertise to be able to make these decisions. That's the myth that has been perpetuated in some sense. However, the reality is that the things that you need to do for money management are no-brainers. Eighty percent of the stuff that you have to do on a monthly basis can actually be put on autopilot. Also, based on one’s background and current context, the suggestions for one are also relatively finite.
But the important thing is that within one minute of downloading the SALT app, how can you intuitively decide whether a certain amount of funds make sense or you have to pick something else. Thematically, that is what we are trying to solve. How do you bring intuition back to money and money decisions, and that intuition has to happen with speed, and can't be a one-hour exercise?
Within three months of a customer using SALT, we will look at how we can get you to configure your money system on SALT, such that your bread and butter gets taken care of. After that, all you have to do every month is just make tweaks or interventions to make your portfolio more efficient or change exposure.
Users, by then, will have the comfort that they have the basics taken care of. The second thing is that the app will also help manage interventions for emergencies, or deal with windfall gains through bonuses etc.
What will be the next step? What licences will be required to offer the products?
Aditi Sholapurkar: It is interesting that this is your next question because that is also how we approach money matters in life, right? From thinking about what exactly is money in our lives to the next step where all the complicated stuff comes in, in this case, licences.
Financial service is such a regulated and licensed industry. It’s a good thing. What's problematic is when the customer starts thinking like that, when you start associating so much complexity with money. Things like insurance, getting a mortgage, or a card are very much a part of a person's money management. We will do a lot, if not all of those things. And yes, for some of them, we will get licensed.
What is a lot more important is getting to know your customers. It is very difficult to tailor and personalise your financial needs on a one-to-one level, but you can contextualise it to a very high extent, based on a person's life. Our money personality test comes across as fun and friendly.
But there is actually an insane amount of data science and cluster analysis behind it. Our goal was very simple. It was to really understand the money drivers of a person. Everything from their spending behaviour to their propensity to save, the anxiety they feel, if they don't do those things, and the inherent sense of intuition.
We have information that says people’s needs are very different, but they're also really similar. So, the angle of attack you take becomes really important.
What we realised was that there has to be an almost perfect dance of two approaches -- transactional and non-transactional. The non-transactional approach is everything from the money personality test to the money journaling module, which is the closest thing to having a hyper-personalised money map.
On the more transactional side, we are starting out with investing as it was what the majority sought, partly because of COVID-19 and partly because investing is a big need for people, especially women.
We have a broking licence, so we can offer mutual funds. For products like insurance, we may not get a licence, we may look at partnering.
What are the reasons you think women need the app? Is personalisation the common theme?
Shinjini Kumar: From all our conversations, the headline message is: ‘get me started’. What they want to get started varies. For a lot of people, it is to get me started on investing; for others, it is saving or understanding their incomes. The female economy constitutes disproportionately of those whose incomes are not stable monthly salaries. A lot of them are freelancers. Sometimes, they don't have a proper tool to log in everything they're earning.
The interesting point, which we have heard a lot of women say, is that, ‘I have a mishmash of a portfolio, because I heard everybody who gave me some advice’. Now get me started to understand exactly where I am and what next. Everybody talks about personalisation in finance and it is a sad thing that first you're told personalisation and then eventually nobody, no bank or even apps, inform you simple things like where do you actually spend your money. These are not easy problems to solve but that is why they are worth solving.
Chaitra Chidanand: For this, we have the passbook product, which is the world's first natural language processing (NLP) based journaling tool. Journaling through it is as easy as typing a WhatsApp message, but the tech behind it is complex. Currently, the private alpha is just aimed at those who want to be co-creators and help our models get better.
On investing, we have seen that people come close to the edge but they don’t jump in. So, we have created a test drive, a mock trading tool through which they can create a portfolio. The third bit is around helping rebalance the portfolio. For that, we are creating tools that are inspired and also named after real users. The whole idea is that you have an idea of a money map and also what are the gaps.
Going forward, will you also lend through the app?
Aditi Sholapurkar: Yes, the idea is to offer lending, insurance etc., because these are very important aspects.
Shinjini Kumar: Fundamentally, as a platform, we want to not become a seller of anything, we want to bring buyers. So, if there are women who will need credit products, yes, of course, we'll make them available. But the thought process is not, ‘let's sell credit cards first, find people and then sell’.
The initial focus is on money map, advising and investments. So, what will be the revenue model in the beginning?
Aditi Sholapurkar: We will be earning transaction-based revenue. Commoditised wealth is not very highly monetizable but we may get certain basis points on every transaction. As you go deeper into the slightly more bespoke wealth segments, some of your customers might want portfolio management services. Those obviously become higher margin products.
Shinjini Kumar: Monetization is not a hard problem to solve. The hard problem to solve is building trust and getting clients to do these transactions on your platform.
What are the challenges in getting women onto the platform? Will you be looking at any specific segment?
Chaitra Chidanand: One of the biggest myths that people have is that the number of earning women is very small. What people don't realise is that every woman, whether earning or not, has money flowing through her life. She is basically managing a budget every month for her household -- whether her husband gave her that money, or because she is a freelancer.
Half of this country's and the world's population have money flowing through their lives.
The second factor which people forget is that, inherently, women are wired to save. Today, they're saving and storing that money. In the last two years, there is an awareness that saving and storing is not good, thanks to all the events that have occurred in the last few years.
There is an awareness that one should save and deploy. Deployment can mean investment, insurance, or even mortgage or buying a car etc. These are the three areas where SALT will operate.
But we are not limiting ourselves. We are not exclusive to women. Already, today, we see that 30-40 percent of the people who have taken our money personality test are men. We focus on women because they are the biggest opportunity for us.
Shinjini Kumar: The fundamental difference between women and men is melding. When it comes to the poor, women are already a little bit more aware of their money. Wealthier women tend to leave money management more to somebody else.
So, it is not a hard thing to expect that men will also have similar problems as women, either because existing financial services don't do justice to them, or, more importantly, their lifestyles are not similar to their fathers. Today, everyone has choices to earn as and when they like. It is not linear anymore.
Women faced all of these problems because they were not choices. Women were discriminated against and given a life where they did not have assets or certainty of income. They had bursts of employment followed by unemployment.
What is your target number of users? How do you plan to get more women to the idea of using an app to manage finances?
Aditi Sholapurkar: Since the app was born during COVID-19, we stopped thinking of this in terms of urban Tier I or II towns. During our 500 interviews, we spoke to people from all economic segments and age groups, and not just limited to India.
What we learnt is that there are enough and more women who don’t lack intent, right? So, to begin with, just focusing on the ones that already have this latent intent will be enough.
In terms of who that customer is, we like to think of her as an urbanised woman. It doesn't matter where she lives, but in terms of traits and characteristics, she has a smartphone, and is on social media etc. We initially thought that the age group of 25 to 45 would be right. But as we're learning through our waitlist, there is actually a remarkable amount of interest from the 18-30 year age group as well.
Chaitra Chidanand: In the 18-35 age group, the intent is very high. The numbers are also very high. They are also the easy ones to convert. But the 35-45 year age group is where a lot of money is to be made. The users will be fewer in number there, but in investment terms, their AUMs will probably be 10x more.
In the beginning, we thought, maybe this is a tier II or III target market platform. But, like Aditi said, we had to start from the top of the pyramid and go down. In terms of potential growth, currently we have 1 lakh users who have taken our money personality test and signed up for the waitlist. By the end of this year, we expect to grow this by 10x to 10 lakh and by the next year to 1 crore.
Aditi Sholapurkar: The average network effect (impact due to information dissemination via word of mouth) for anything is supposed to be 2-2.5x. In the context of money, since it is a unifying factor, our average network effect came out to be 4.5x.
But very interestingly, in the case of women, the network effect went up to as high as 7-8x.
Tell us how this started, how did you all get together during the pandemic and decide to leave your previous roles to start this?
Chaitra Chidanand: All three of us, through our personal journeys, have faced this problem of dealing with money and also observing other people struggling to deal with money. In terms of awareness, I think it has always been there.
In my case, as a product and design person, I always believe that if you make something easy, everybody will use it. With Simpl, I realised that was not true.
Even in the fifth year of Simpl, only 10 percent of users were women. Through my interactions, I realised that the decision-making style of men and women are very different. Men seem to be very binary in their decision making, while women are fence-sitters. When presented with something new, they never say yes or no. They were more like, ‘maybe’. What that made me realise is that when you have fence-sitters, all of them are potential customers. They are not shutting you out.
So, how do you convert them? Women have a high barrier for trust, they want to know you more and also know you through independent references.
The realisation was that if you want to get these lucrative customers onto your platform, you have to take a different approach to marketing, distribution and product positioning. I did some research and I understood that other companies that are building for women, for example Nykaa, also start with fence-sitters. Because it is not that just because you are selling makeup, women will come and buy.
Secondly, I have seen the impact personally. My mother is connected to villages, and, 25 years ago, she had helped 15 women to set up a Self-Help Group (SHG). It had an exponential impact on the lives of those 15 women. They saved Rs 10-15 per person per week. Some of their kids have studied in international universities and are working in international locations.
Shinjini Kumar: I have done financial services. That is the only thing I know, but I also come from a small place and I travel a lot. I have a very acute awareness of real life, and, to a large extent, that real life seems disconnected with the bubble in which I find myself gradually over a period of time.
When Chaitra started talking to me about her plans to do something for women with a very basic insight, and why group finance works for poor women, and the rich women just seem to be leaving it all to somebody else, it seemed like a very interesting problem. I dilly-dallied, but it just felt like the right time to do it. There were very few reasons I could give myself to not do this.
I started as a policymaker, right? So, I have always had this great sense of purpose to whatever I do, although I found myself in very cool private sector jobs. But I've always had that desire to impact a large number of people, and I think with SALT, I found that mission.
Aditi Sholapurkar: Chaitra and Shinjini have known each other since Chaitra’s PwC days and they had been speaking about this for a while. I knew Shinjini through Paytm. I had met Chaitra once back then. In hindsight, I left with a very distinctive feeling about her.
When COVID-19 hit, there were large-scale job losses. It was surprising to see how the women in my life, who were very successful and independent, react to this situation. Some of them asked me for a master class on how they can invest or manage finances. I realised that they felt such disproportionate shame because they thought it was their fault that they did not know some financial jargons or how to invest.
That made me think that finance is probably the only industry that has convinced the customer that it's their fault. With that, all my other realisations came crashing. In all that years and years of working in these ultra male-dominated workplaces, I had not had a single money conversation with a woman colleague.
It is something that comes so naturally and easily to men. It surprised me that something as complicated and scientific as skin care has been made easy through just YouTube videos, but finance is still scary. I was contemplating starting a YouTube channel, when Shinjini called me about this.
What are the challenges you have experienced being part of an all-women-founder startup, compared to your previous workplaces?
Chaitra Chidanand: It is very different, in a very good way. I guess it is effortless than earlier. At least, personally, I can say that. I know that it's the same for all three of us. Because I feel that women are natural communicators.
Also, we have been deliberate about it, thanks to the experiences we've been through. We make it a point to talk about the difficult stuff. It is not just a function of us being women, but also as a function of us being smart women who don't like making the same mistakes again. We like making newer mistakes (laughs).
Secondly, our value systems resonate and complementarity in style play well. The only challenge is when we tell people that none of us have taken any titles in the organisaton. It is hard for them to internalise that because they are so used to the alpha- male CEO culture.
How is it when you talk to investors? Do they see you differently now as compared to how they reacted to you in your previous roles?
Aditi Sholapurkar: It is very interesting, actually. People, in general, want to do the right thing. But unfortunately, they are very often so genuinely blinded by their own biases, that it takes literally an anthropology and psychology. Plus, by default, there are so many male founders and CEOs. So, what ends up happening is that people get used to this particular style of building a company.
So, many of our investors are almost so surprised that we were right about the approach. Initially, when we were telling people about psychometrics in the money personality test, most people were polite, but there was this mental dismissiveness.
Now when it has turned into a top of the funnel and waitlist numbers are piling up and we have data from people, they are like, ‘you actually know all this about a customer from a three-minute interview?’
That makes you realise that, maybe as a woman founder, the proof of the work you are expected to show is different not just because you're a woman founder, but because your way of getting to this point is so different from what that person is used to looking at.
Even regarding our leadership stage, barring our lead investor, everyone was like how can you not have a CEO, that's just not possible! People assume that there is no way to resolve a conflict or make decisions if an organisation is not centered around a particular person. People were so sure that this would just crash and burn. So, people need to see it work, see you build good products and do all that they were skeptical about. Hopefully, it gets easier but to be honest, that is the one big challenge.
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