Fintech Startup BankSathi Raises $4 Mn as Pre-series A round

Bangalore based social ecommerce platform BankSathi has raised $4M USD in funding from Kotak Securities, Lets Venture, We Founder Circle, Hem Securities and IPV (Inflection Point Ventures).

The company has 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), and Mukund Modi (MS Fincap).

The funds will be used to invest in high-calibre employees across all the company's operations and to 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.

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.

Jitendra Dhaka, Founder & CEO said, “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. With this funding, we will be able to expand product, technology, and distribution network at a faster pace.”

Jaideep Hansraj, MD & CEO, Kotak Securities Limited said, “Today small and mid-sized financial advisors/micro-entrepreneurs are not able to directly work with financial institutions. BankSathi is enabling these micro-entrepreneurs to sell & earn extra income through selling financial products online and making themselves financially independent & 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 use technology to reduce mis-selling of financial products. Our vision is to build technology which reduces the physical work and even helps financial institutions to shift to digitalisation. So far, we have been successful to implement it and few financial institutions are also adopting end to end tech for financial products distribution. We have an endeavour to empower 10M financial advisors and serve 50M+ customers in the next five years and we are on track to achieve the same,” quoted CTO and co-founder of BankSathi, Sandeep Kaler.

Abakkus, Sunil Singhania said, “It’s my pleasure to be an investor in BankSathi, a unique fintech platform. The passion of Jitendra and his team and the unique model of creating entrepreneurship opportunities for millions of Indians while connecting banks and customers is what has been the most unique feature of BankSathi.”

According to BankSathi, its advisor base has increased by 40X and since the company's formation, advisors have earned more than 6M+ by serving 3M+ customer base across 18K pin codes. Financial advisors include insurance agents, chartered accountants, product advisors, financial analysts, retired bankers and small business entrepreneurs. In a span of 20 months of operation the company made an ARR of $10M USD.

This start-up also employed top level executives in the last three months, and they plan to add more as they pursue future expansion and overcome the language barrier that impedes financial inclusion, by adding three more languages to the existing five languages in its application.

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.

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