Interviews

How this fintech startup is enabling young Indians to start investing with as little as ₹1

Deciml is a micro-investing and micro-savings app that enables young Indians to auto-invest their spare change (as low as Rupee 1/-) from online transactions into Mutual Funds or Fixed Return Funds. India’s first and only app to offer micro-investing options for mutual funds is based out of  Pune, the company was founded in 2020 by CFA Level 2 and experienced entrepreneur Satyajeet Kunjeer.
Being a socially responsible brand Deciml understands the importance of starting early and hence making young India’s initiation into the investment ecosystem as simple as possible. Add at least 1% more youth onto the path of goal-oriented investing thus uplifting India’s current 3.5% investment penetration. Not just getting started, the app’s additional features such as daily/weekly investments help stay consistent. Mr. Satyajeet Kunjeer, Founder & CEO, Deciml share more insights on the same.

 

  1. What do you mean by round-up investment? Who are its target audience?

Round-up investing lets you invest your spare change from online transactions. For example, if someone purchases Rs 495 worth of groceries through UPI, the app will round it up to the next 10, which is 500 in this case,  and invest the digital spare change of Rs 5 on your behalf.

Round-up investing can be a beneficial investment tool for investors of all ages, but especially for young adults between the age group of 18-25, who are just starting to make money.

In this information age, young adults are well aware of the various pluses of investing, but they don’t know where and how to start. Also, they don’t want to invest too much of their savings. By investing via round-ups, they can start early and start small.

 

  1. Take us through a customer’s journey on the app

The basic mechanism of Deciml involves rounding up online transactions and investing spare change. This automated process consists of two parts: rounding up and actual investing.

For the rounding up – When users receive transaction SMS from their respective banks, Deciml picks up the exact amount spent. It rounds it up to the next 10, or multiple of 10, as determined by the user. In order to proceed, the user must grant SMS viewing permission at the outset, and no other SMS is read besides these transactional ones.

For the debiting and investment – ‘Users set up an AutoPay Mandate with Deciml’

With a mandate of this nature, Deciml is able to debit the amount to be invested immediately, without requesting additional information from the user. Moreover, the user must also undergo a simple KYC (Know Your Customer) process as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India for all Indian investors.

 

  1. How and where the money collected is actually invested?

Users can choose to invest their money in mutual funds or fixed returns fund options.

 

  1. What are the company’s immediate and long-term plans?

We’re soon launching Deciml app in the Apple Store and with this Deciml will be the first micro-investment platform on IOS.

With a comprehensive range of investment and financial services customized to the needs of our users, we aim to become an all-in-one financial destination for young Indians in the next five years.

 

  1. From a tech perspective, the personal finance space has evolved drastically in recent years, where are we heading from here?

In the past couple of years, data has become the most valuable resource for any company,

And technologies such as advanced data analytics, Artificial intelligence, and Machine learning have been leveraged more and more to access, control and evaluate such raw data thus help us better understand human behaviour and human psychology.

The creation of India Stack has played a major role in transforming the financial industry from Aadhar for digital identification to Digi locker/eKYC for paperless verification and UPI for Interoperable payments.

Also, financial data being centralized and completely controlled by the consent of the user, makes the Account Aggregator a game changer for the finance industry as well.

 

  1. Tell us about the tech stack that your platform is utilizing

We have deployed a robust tech mechanism, including e-KYC and AutoPay built on top of UPI 2.0, to make sure customer onboarding is absolutely seamless. Furthermore, we have employed 256-bit AES encryption (bank-grade encryption) to ensure user data security.

The app has been built on Flutter, which is a platform by Google for building hybrid apps (Android and iOS) and ss a backend, we make use of the Google Cloud platform.

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