How This Fintech Startup Is Revolutionizing The Concept Of Investing- Roundups

• ByStartupStory     |    August 26, 2021

“Sudden surge of Fintech apps is building the pervasiveness of habits and culture among lots of young adults today when it comes to buying and selling stocks. Good investing is simple and good investing is boring. It is more to do with behavior than knowledge. People should focus on behavior. That’s more important when it comes to investing,” said Vikram Hirawat, Founder, Roundups in an insightful interview with Startup Story

Have you ever wondered what if buying your favorite coffee or purchasing your long-awaited phone could actually land you up in investing in mutual funds? And that inadvertent action of investing helps you save a huge amount in the long run.  In today’s time, Gen Z has been seen actively engaged in buying and trading stocks. Majority of them have been doing so due to peer pressure or maybe because Elon Musk has tweeted to buy Dogecoin. However, it’s simultaneously essential to start saving from a young age to gain high returns in the long run. “Personal Finance is 80% behavior and only 20% knowledge” Dave Ramsey. Money is not just about math. It’s not just about making thousands a year and living off of it, it’s also about behavior on how to handle that money. Therefore, modifying behavior towards investing, saving or spending becomes extremely imperative. With a vision of making people financially independent by incorporating the right habits in them; Roundups was developed.  

Roundups, Chennai-based micro investing app that invests users’ spare change whenever one makes a purchase. Founded in 2020 by Vikram Hirawat, Atishe Chordia, and Babu Krishnamoorthy. The startup is aimed at educating and helping people invest money every time they splurge their money until it becomes a regular act of doing so.

Beginning Of Roundups

In 2019, when Vikram came up with this intriguing idea. He did his research and perceived that there are not many startups in this space that allows people to invest in an easiest way. In November, Vikram met his Co-founder Atishe Chordia. He’s the company’s CTO. However, they both decided to build a product together. Later in March, they met another Co-founder Babu Krishnamoorthy who’s the startup’s investment advisor. The three decided to incorporate the company in July. Since then, they’ve been building the product making it more efficient. The company is also registered as Mutual Fund Distributors by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI).

Speaking with Startup Story, Vikram explained how Roundups actually help one in investing. ‘Let’s say, you walk into Starbucks and swipe your card for ₹180, the app rounds it off to Rs 200, and invests the spare change, i.e., ₹20 into a portfolio of mutual funds.’ Roundups invest your money in a Liquid Fund. The fund is managed by ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund. The startup also provides content related to learning, saving and investing for beginners on their platform. Vikram claims that the app helps in inculcating the right behavior; simple affordable investing. It offers three and four options that’s essential for the user to invest in. Most importantly, every time people spend money on the Roundups app, they also invest a little bit of it in an asset that yields returns. “We want to help users achieve financial independence especially among young adults by not promoting the pervasiveness of culture and habits amongst them.”

Process of Getting started on the app is pretty easy- the usual KYC process that financial apps need, and giving it the necessary permissions to access bank transaction information. The app auto-debits the spare change amount and puts it towards an investment fund.

With Roundups one can start with investing with even ₹1. It enables effortless saving. Roundups basically round-up one’s purchases to the nearest 100 and invest the change. Moreover, it offers automatic and safe investing, they directly invest your saved up change in a low-risk portfolio to maximize user gains.  One can even keep a track on their online transactions, how much one has spent and how much change they are able to save up from each expense. 

Customer Feedback

The response has been great until now. Roundups has already seen more than 3,000 organic downloads. ‘The startup has invested more than 1 lakh of spare change. Users love the idea of saving easily. People have found the concept very unique and interesting,’ said Vikram.

Future Plans And Funding

When Startup Story asked Vikram about the future plan, he replied, ‘First goal is to close a round of funding by the end of the year, second is to expand their team and finally to move from 3,000 downloads to 30,000-40,000 downloads by the end of the year.’ About funding, Roundups is a fully bootstrapped company.

 

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