The Customer First Fintech Freo's flagship product, MoneyTap, a credit line product, was launched in 2016. It has 17 million installs till date

By Shrabona Ghosh

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The financial ecosystem around the world has shifted to emphasize customer convenience and happiness. Today, there is a need to simplify financial services. "We aim to give consumers products that allow freedom from non-digital and painful processes. We provide simple, intuitive and intelligent ways for people to access credit, spend and save money through their smart phones," said Kunal Varma, co-founder and CEO, Freo.

Freo's flagship product, MoneyTap, a credit line product, was launched in 2016. It is well known in the lending industry, with more than 17 million installs till date. "The benefit of paying interest only on the amount used makes it unique."

Now a neobank, Freo offers savings accounts, BNPL/PayLater products, credit cards and insurance products to users in about 1,000 cities. Giving an insight into the tech code, Ankan Singhvi, CTO of Freo, said, "Technology is at the heart of Freo."

"Our teams concentrate on providing a delightful customer experience, risk evaluation, cross-sell and upsell. All of our backend applications are written in Java, Kotlin, and Python; AWS managed Postgres instances for transactional databases; self-hosted Redis instances for caching; Redshift/Athena for data warehousing and data analytics; Android/iOS for mobile apps. We are beginning to see the advantages of Flutter and are moving our apps to Flutter completely," added the CTO.

The COVID-19 pandemic upturned many aspects of the world in multiple ways and banking is no exception. "With a growing demand for convenient digital solutions and offline banking becoming crowded and cumbersome, neo banks have emerged and grown exponentially across the globe. By merging the convenience of modern-day solutions with the trust and reliability provided by its partners, Freo aims to offer a vast pool of financial products that are easier, quicker and more compelling by leveraging state-of-the-art technologies," said Varma.

"The strength of the product lies in how we managed COVID-19. Like all lending businesses, we too faced headwinds but still managed to grow. Now our lending business is growing 2.5 times year-on-year. We are also excited that our products are available in more than 1,000 cities in India, and the credit that we have disbursed amounting to more than INR 5,000 crore," the CEO added.

Fintech has changed people's perceptions of money. "We are choosing to hold our strong belief in a superior product strategy that involves creating innovative products. While pursuing growth, we're also ensuring that we build a capital efficient business that is resilient and generates a lot of value for our shareholders and partners," said the CEO.

Factsheet:

· Amount of funding received - $40 million

· Year of inception - 2015

· Number of employees - 220+

· No. of app downloads - 17 million+

· Current Turnover - The Company's revenue growing 2-2.5x year on year.
The customer base is also growing at the rate of 3X - 4X year-on-year.

Shrabona Ghosh

Senior Correspondent

I write on corporates and lead a project called 'Corporate Innovations', wherein I cover large enterprises across technology, auto, FMCG and avaition. I engage in CEO dialogues and run my podcast series: The Big Bosses. You can reach out to me at gshrabona@entrepreneurindia.com
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