I am Dhruv Arora and I have co-founded FinPin. I am an engineer at heart and have always liked to build things; be it products, processes or high performing teams. I completed my MBA from IIM, Bangalore and hold a Mechanical Engineering Degree from Delhi College of Engineering. I was born and brought up in Delhi but left the city after my graduation and have been traveling since then. I am now settled in Mumbai with my wife and parents since 2011.
After DCE, while my colleagues were applying for MS/MBA/Mtech, I opted for a job in a reputed manufacturing company called Thermax in Pune. As my first project, I chose to stay for 3 months in a remote industrial town called Beawar in Rajashtan to build India’s first petroleum rejects fired boiler for Shree Cements Limited. I wanted to experience engineering in its true glory and this project was extremely empowering. I consider the 4 years that I spent in Thermax, the foundation of beliefs and attitude. I covered the entire spectrum of engineering from climbing 100 mts chimneys to selling 200 Crs worth of products to the CEOs/MDs of big companies. I traveled from Ludhiana to Chennai to Surat to Shillong on multiple projects.
Thereafter, I applied for CAT and decided to go towards management side and joined IIM Bangalore. I joined Aditya Birla Group’s Leadership Program and opted for financial services business. I got excited with the personal finance domain. I have spent 8 years in PFM space and have managed sales, business strategy, sales processes, operations, platform, customer service. This domain has a lot of potential to improve by deploying advanced technologies and process innovation.
When and how did you think about FinPin?
I always felt that we need to do more in helping people understand their money in easy language. Money Management field is full of jargons and complicated discussions on markets, return, nifty, currency, volatility. This tends to put off almost everyone and a feeling of money anxiety prevails. This needs change.
The idea and the name Finpin was born on 13 November 2015, when me and my co-founder decided to do something to change this. Finpin stands for financial planning and investment navigator. We are creating it as an intelligent digital advisor that will help everyone in making right financial decisions basis their unique requirements.
We didn’t want to start without an easy process to understand one’s money. Over the next few months we studied, deliberated and discussed to create a unique process of financial engagement which is technology friendly. We were ready with our new process and filed for a patent by Aug’16 and launched Finpin in Sept’16.
From whom you got inspiration to start Finpin?
The decision to leave a flourishing corporate career and take the road of entrepreneurship was a difficult one. But I was convinced about the idea, found the right co-founder and we were able to create a new process of managing money. At this juncture, If had not done it I would have had to live with the question – “What if ??” So I asked my wife/family and they extended their full support. I decided to take the plunge.
Introduce your Co-Founder and Team.
I was fortunate to find the perfect co-founder, Apurva Parekh. Apurva is from Mumbai and is extremely talented. He has been in the IT industry for over 25 years and is well respected in the profession. He was part of the core founding team at the Aditya Birla Group’s online personal finance platform – MyUniverse. He has diverse experience in managing software technology projects across various geographies like Japan, Switzerland, USA, India, UK, Belgium etc.
We were colleagues in Aditya Birla and had built good professional rapport over the years. We used to bounce off ideas with each other quite regularly. But the idea of creating an intelligent financial advisor made both of us really excited.
Finpin currently has a 8 member Team of people from diverse backgrounds.
Explain more about Finpin, what makes you special and how is it different from others?
The current financial advisory industry focuses on just the top 1% of Indian households, Finpin is being created to serve the remaining 99% through optimal use of technology and process innovation. The field of money management is full of many kinds of players but we are creating a niche for Finpin. We don’t sell any financial product but provide holistic and unbiased advice. Clients are free to buy products from anywhere. We ensure that they have the right information about their finances to make right decisions.
We are focused on the activity of holistic financial planning to create personalized saving, spending and investing plan for clients. We offer a dedicated financial advisor & an intuitive digital platform at a reasonable cost of just Rs 1,499 per month. With finpin, anyone can understand their money, their cash flows and their financial future.
Visit Finpin : Website
We are glad to share that, recently we have been selected in Facebook Bootstrap track called FBStart.
What challenges did you face while setting up Finpin? how did you overcome?
The biggest challenge that we face is spreading awareness of our services, digitally. We can explain the importance and benefits of our services face to face but doing it digitally is a whole new ball game. We being from this industry were used to practices, terminologies and language. But we were not getting satisfactory response initially. Hence we experimented a lot with our design, process and language. After almost 15 versions we narrowed down to the current version which is generating exceptional response. We also did a lot of experimentation on different channels of marketing and learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t for our proposition.
Majority of times, decisions are to be made swiftly and under complete or substantial uncertainty. One needs to make decisions, learn from the outcome and create this kind of an experimentation loop. One cannot wait for the creating an ideal version.
What’s the current path, Finpin Funding status and future plans?
The response on a boring topic of money has been phenomenal. We have already got 26000+ visitors one our website/app page and generated close to 1000 prospects. We are currently pre-revenue and basis the response we are building a robust platform to generate outstanding customer experience.
We also have a live blog on life & Money. The response on all these channels has been really encouraging. We have 3000+ likes on facebook and more than 50,000 views of our videos apart from engagement on our posts.
We are currently bootstrapped and looking for the right partner. The future of money management is intelligent financial planning. We are excited about our product and look to get 15000 happy customers by FY18.
Analyze all 4 financial facets of money management https://t.co/uWoktIdOFk #finpinin #financialadvisor #financialplanning #personalfinance pic.twitter.com/8dBk9eMyJb
— FINPIN (@finpinin) December 7, 2016
We really appreciate the efforts put in by VID team for promoting entrepreneurship in India. India has such a vast talent pool. With the right ecosystem and innovative support mechanisms a lot of them will be able to realise their dream of setting up their own company. It’s an amazing journey.
Finpin is available on google playstore | Finpin Website | Facebook | twitter | YouTube
