How This Bangalore-Based Startup Is Using Machine Learning To Help Millennials Invest Wisely
Let’s face the truth. Millennials haven’t been successful in handling their money wisely. Today’s younger, working generation is facing many financial problems and is still struggling to achieve that “holy trifecta” that the Baby Boomers coveted — house, job and spouse. To get over the fear of investing, people need to be well informed about the market. To bridge this gap, Bangalore-based investment platform Groww is working towards educating and helping people between the ages of 26 to 40 invest their money fruitfully. Background Groww is one of India’s fastest-growing investment platform with a $29.2 million funding and investors like Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital India, Kauffman Fellows Fund, Collin West, Propel Venture Partners among others. The investment platform was co-founded by former Flipkart employees Lalit Keshre, Harshit Jain, Ishan Bansal and Neeraj Singh in 2017. Thanks to the new-age apps, the average number of investors has come to 26 years from 40 years. Groww fills the gap of knowledge that the millennials or any other generations have. On Groww people learn about long-term investments starting with short-term investment products. Soon when they’ve enough experience, they move on to long-term investments like Systematics Investment Plans (SIP). With fast growth, 60% of Groww’s user base is spread across the country, predominantly in tier 2 and 3 cities with no signs of stopping. To further catalyse its growth, Groww will be launching investments in stocks. To know more about the technology behind the investment platform, we caught up with Lalit Keshre, co-founder and CEO at Groww. Identifying Market Need Keshre observed that when compared with developed nations such as the US and the UK, where participation inequities are around 40-50%, India has about 2-3%. He figured out that the potential for growth in this sector was immense, keeping in mind India’s promising growth prospects. “Campaigns like ‘mutual fund Sahi hai’ run by AMFI and others have done a great deal to increase awareness about mutual funds. It has ignited considerable interest among investors who would have traditionally invested in chit funds or gold only. With a population of over 1.3 billion, India’s investment market has a long way to go. The only way to uncover this potential and bring investors under the investing umbrella makes investing simple by creating a safe and easy to use the platform, and increase awareness around investing using educational content – both of which Groww is aiming at,” he explained. Groww-ing Tech “At present, our tech stack includes React native, Springboot, SpringCloud, and a microservices-based architecture that allows Groww to scale,” explains Keshre. One of the basic premises behind Groww is that it works with the fact that the process of purchasing financial products in India is too complicated and opaque. There are close to 200 million people with investable income in India, while only 20 million actively invest. This is where Groww found out that while the intent to shift from traditional assets to financial assets was strong, there wasn’t a single platform that ticked all the right boxes. With their engineering team size touching 65, Groww gives huge importance to having the best talent on board and making deliberate decisions for the same. “We have been visiting the best campuses in India to hire across our engineering function and have some great minds aboard; we have some of the brightest minds on board constantly ideating ways to make our products easy and secure. When it comes to hiring, the first thing we see is a cultural fit, followed by practical experience, the zeal to innovate and hunger to learn new things. We are looking for people who are passionate about their craft and love solving complex problems,” he explains. Using AI/ML In The Company “Groww leverages technology at each user touchpoint to provide a hasslefree experience. Right from onboarding to KYC to investing, the entire flow is automated and paperless. As opposed to account creation process on other platforms and banks, which may take days, the 100% paperless onboarding employs the use of multiple APIs, services and databases to verify personal details within seconds, making the process seamless and instant for users,” explains Keshre. To enable this, Groww uses image processing which uses world-class machine learning models. This helps them in automating manual workflows, reducing errors and increasing user ease throughout the journey.
Let’s face the truth. Millennials haven’t been successful in handling their money wisely. Today’s younger, working generation is facing many financial problems and is still struggling to achieve that “holy trifecta” that the Baby Boomers coveted — house, job and spouse. To get over the fear of investing, people need to be well informed about […]
To bridge the gap between knowledge and investing, Bangalore-based investment platform Groww is working towards educating and helping people between the ages of 26 to 40 invest their money fruitfully.
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["AI", "machine learning", "ML", "Aim", "RAG", "microservices", "R", "Go", "API", "funding"]
Sameer is an aspiring Content Writer. Occasionally writes poems, loves food and is head over heels with Basketball.