Sqrrl Success Story: How Sqrrl Simplifies Personal Finance user-friendly platform to invest in SIP, Mutual Funds, and Tax Saving Plans

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Sqrrl Success story Company Profile is an initiative by ListMyStartUp to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Sqrrl.

Today, in contrast to savings, the internet offers various unprecedented methods to spend money. One can easily see that spending have become increasingly easier and savings has become gradually difficult. To bridge this huge chasm between saving and spending patterns, Sanjeev and Samant decided to tap a new market – the millennials & GenZs , by launching Sqrrl.

Sqrrl is a wealth management platform founded by Samant Sikka (Chief Dreamer), Sanjeev Sharma and Dhananjay Singh. The Sqrrl team works to simplify personal finance for millions of young Indians. Sqrrl’s mission is to impact the lives of 3 million young Indians by helping them save, invest and prosper by 2021!

Sqrrl – Company Highlights

Startup Name-Sqrrl
Founder-Samant Sikka (Chief Dreamer),Sanjeev Sharma, Dhananjay Singh
Founded-2017
Headquarter-Gurgaon, New Delhi
Sector-Finance and Investment/Fintech
Website-sqrrl.in

Sqrrl – About

Sqrrl is a platform aimed at helping young Indians save their earnings while keeping things simple. With Sqrrl, it’s not about putting away large chunks of salary, but rather small sums with just a couple of clicks. Sqrrl is a wealth management platform. Sqrrl is an app-only platform with the MVP around savings and investment products powered by Mutual Funds.

Technology is being used for the greater good today, even in personal lives. It is an attempt to stay at the forefront of this new wave of technology by combining a great user experience with something substantial. The Sqrrl team works to simplify personal finance for millions of young Indians.

As of today (Feb 2021), Sqrrl provides 7 different products under their app

Systematic Investment Plan (SIP)
Goal-based investment
Axe Tax
Sqrrl Away
Lump sum investment
Fixed Deposit
Personal Loans

Sqrrl – Industry and Target Market Size

Sqrrl operates in the personal finance space. The main target users are young Indians – both millennials and GenZs.

With an acute focus on the financial aspirations of the new age generation, Sqrrl is geared to capitalize on India’s 440 Mn millennials (390 Mn GenZ). The challenge here is that the younger generation finds financial products, boring, jargonized and not adding any value to their lives. The company wishes to change that by offering simple financial solutions that will bring a huge change in the financial wellness of its customers.

Sqrrl – Product/Service offered

The Sqrrl platform gauges the personalized investment needs of individuals and matches them with funds available in the industry. It is like a personal finance buddy that one can rely on to save and grow money. Sqrrl is an app-only platform with the MVP around savings and investment products powered by Mutual Funds.

As of today (Feb 2021),Sqrrl provides 7 different products Systematic Investment Plan (SIP), Goal-based investment, Axe Tax, Sqrrl Away, Lump sum investment, Fixed Deposit and Personal Loans under the app.

Sqrrl – Founders and Team

Samant Sikka (Chief Dreamer), Sanjeev Sharma and Dhananjay Singh are the co-founders of Sqrrl.

Samant Sikka (Founder & Chief Dreamer, Sqrrl)

Samant Sikka, the founder of the fintech has over 20 years of experience in financial services. He has major stints in Sales, Business Development, Strategy and Marketing with firms like Franklin Templeton, AIG Investments, Goldman Sachs & Axis Asset Management.

Sqrrl Founder

Samant Sikka, Chief Dreamer & Founder, Sqrrl

Sanjeev Sharma (Co-founder, Sqrrl)

Co-founder, Sanjeev Sharma, has over 16 years experience in financial services with background in business setup and expansion, financing and operational excellence with firms like Franklin Templeton Investments, AIG Investment & Pine Bridge Investments. Sanjeev and Samant have worked together in the past in Franklin Templeton and AIG and continued to be in touch.

Dhananjay Singh (Co-founder, Sqrrl)

The founders were very clear about the role of technology in solving the challenges for the customers and therefore, decided to bring in Dhananjay, who brought the Tech domain to the team which plays a critical role in our business. Co-founder, Dhananjay Singh is an IIT-Kharagpur graduate with an experience of over 20 years in data science and analytics, a professional with products and canned solutions background with firms like PWC, Tech Mahindra, United Healthcare and Axtria.

Sqrrl – Idea/How it started?

Sqrrl came into existence in early 2017 with the sole aim of simplifying personal finance for young Indians. The journey behind establishing Sqrrl is best described by Mr. Samant Sikka and Mr. Sanjeev Sharma who collectively have over 37 years of experience in the financial services.

Between 2006 to 2016, both Samant and Sanjeev observed an alarming trend with regards to savings in Indian households. India, which is generally described as a saving-oriented country, saw a huge dip in household savings in the last decade wrapping up in March 2016. Statistics show that household savings fell from 22% to 19% as compared to GDP’s ratio, which increased from Rs 0.23 lakh crore to Rs 1.36 lakh crore during the same 10 year period.

The founders were very clear about the role of technology in solving the challenges for the customers and therefore, decided to bring in Dhananjay, who brought the Tech domain to the team .

Sqrrl – Name, Tagline and Logo

As one would think, the name Sqrrl was inspired by the tiniest of animals, Squirrel.The main reason behind it is that a squirrel, despite its small size, plans for the future carefully. It saves a small amount of nuts gradually to build a full stock for the winters. And it does so, by being prepared for even the most desperate times in advance. The sheer size of the whole affair – a small squirrel working hard to save small everyday to make a full pile for the winters is very motivating. The main idea to imbibe financial discipline into young minds through a new financial product – to promote both savings and investing which fortunately, was achieved very well by this.

That’s what the founders of Sqqrl wanted people to think of when they looked at the brand. They wanted to use a young, fresh and vibrant brand name which millennials will associate with. Saving a small amount of money over a long period of time can do wonders.

Sqrrl – Business Model and Revenue Model

Sqrrl’s business model is a combination of B2B and B2C.

Sqrrl has an app that helps the customers directly in saving and investing in mutual funds and taking personal loans

Sqrrl also has multiple integrations with banks and NBFCs that helps in bringing a substantial amount of revenue.

The platform’s subscription called Sqrrl Prime is another source of monetization for the business.

Sqrrl – Startup Launch

For the first 100 users of Sqrrl , it was a soft launch. The initial users were mainly people from the founders’ network. Slowly, the team started communicating with its target users through educating them about the need for financial planning in today’s world.

With education comes awareness and we were banking on that awareness to drive our product further into the hearts and mind of people. Facebook and Google definitely helped us in increasing the traction during initial days and even now – Says Samant Sikka (Founder, Sqrrl)

Sqrrl – Startup Challenges

The initial challenge faced by the Sqrrl team was to build a Minimum Viable Product(MVP). There is no debate that one will always have aspirations to build a fully loaded offering with scarce resources. Humans are very optimistic like but it was important to draw a line. Therefore, few of the important decisions that the team had to make were about saying NO. Say NO to many features that the various customers will need. Instead of that they focused on building a sharp cut around a user persona with a particular use case.

An important decision that the Sqrrl team took was not outsourcing the technology, which meant that they had to slowly but surely start to put together a handpicked team of competent and domain experts who had been able to deliver a great product in a short time frame. There are other challenges that need attention in early days which are Product, Team, Execution, Infra and Funding. Some of these factors can be a big drag on the founder’s bandwidth, the ROTI (Return on Time Invested) is not very high, especially in early days.

Sqrrl – Growth

During 2020, Sqrrl expanded its wings beyond the sphere of savings and investment. It launched many new products and features to solve various financial problems of the customers. These include income tax return e-filing, starting a Fixed Deposit (FD), offering loans, a subscription plan called ‘Sqrrl Prime’ and protection products like accidental insurance.

Sqrrl – Future Plans

In the future, the Sqrrl app plans on offering international investing, and stocks to its customers. Currently, the company is focusing extensively on partnering with banks, NBFCs and other platforms to enance its distribution and reach.

In addition to that, Sqrrl have tie-ups with banking correspondent platforms and many more of these interesting partnerships are already under integration and closure. With the fast and fantastic evolution of the company, it is constantly finding channels to raise resources by speaking actively with financial and strategic investors.

Sqrrl – FAQs

What is Sqrrl?

Sqrrl is a wealth management platform founded by Samant Sikka (Chief Dreamer),Sanjeev Sharma and Dhananjay Singh. The Sqrrl team works to simplify personal finance for millions of young Indians.