For this week’s startup column, Analytics India Magazine spoke to Suman Gandham, founder and CEO at Finin, to understand how the Bangalore-based fintech firm is leveraging emerging technologies to protect sensitive information as well as prevent unauthorised usage.
Founded in 2020 by Suman Gandham and Sudheer Maram, Finin is a consumer-facing neo-banking solution.
Finin implements hyper-personalised solutions, smart & relevant notifications to nudge users into adapting the 50-30-20 rule seamlessly. The rule is a simple plan to help people reach their financial goals. The after-tax income is divided into three parts: 50% on needs, 30% on wants, and squirrelling away 20%.
Flagship Products
According to Gandham, the company has created an easy-to-do onboarding sequence that lets users create a savings account at Finin in minutes with minimum KYC details. Once the SBM-powered bank account is created by the user, a VISA Finin debit card is automatically issued to the user.
The users can also link their other bank accounts to the app to get a single window view of all the transactions and balance. The app allows users to create monthly budgets and financial goals. You will also receive notifications prior to the date of payment and reminders on trial subscriptions.
What’s The Differentiator
Gandham said, “As the first consumer neo-bank in India, we do not have a potential competitor as yet. What sets us apart from the other fintech companies is the core savings driven approach of our company. The main aim of Finin is not just to offer wealth management and banking features but also to be akin to a Fitbit for the Finance industry.”
Use of AI @ Finin
Finin uses AI-powered analytics and insights to send users the save or spend data, reminders on trial subscription cancellations, recommendations on the best practices, bill payments, tracking refunds and more. Also, the nudge theorem employs the 50-30-20 rule that helps in guiding users towards smart financial choices.
Core Tech Stack
Front End:
- Mobile application in IOS & Android
Backend (AWS Infrastructure):
- Business Logic is developed using REST API (DRF)
- RDS managed service for Datastore
DataScience:
- Event streaming using Apache Kafka
- Apache Druid as a backend for analytics helps the company in clicking stream analytics, user activity and behaviour as well as application performance management.
Recent Funding
In July 2020, the company raised an undisclosed amount in a Pre-Series A round from Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures. The fintech startup is currently in the process of raising Series A funding.
Hiring
Gandham said the hiring at Finin is a healthy mix of referrals and recommendations along with some hiring tool assistance.
Future Roadmap
“Our product roadmap is extensive and impressive. We have a lot of feature roll-outs planned in the near future. Mutual funds, investments, lending and credit cards are just a few of them. We are even looking to foster some meaningful partnerships to improve the product experience for our customers. The aim is to lead users towards goal-oriented savings, better financial decisions and powerful insights to guide them towards financial independence,” said Gandham.
