Do you ever have the money blues at the end of the month? EarlySalary might be the ideal answer for you.
It was late at night, and two friends, Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal, couldn’t stop talking about the financial troubles with the end of the month. Even though they were no longer students, the end of the month meant a flat wallet virtually every time IPass $200 loan.
Even though they started by discussing their predicament, they quickly realized that this dilemma couldn’t be unique to them and that countless young working professionals must have a similar story to share. They searched the market for financial solutions but couldn’t discover anything to aid them.
“We saw a gap in the market for a solution that may solve the month-end money issues that young working professionals encounter,” says Akshay. After meeting over a hundred working people at cafeterias, IT parks, and coffee shops, the pair decided to create EarlySalary, a smartphone app.
The inner workings of the app
EarlySalary provides fast cash and short-term loans to young working professionals in India, powered by social media underwriting.
The app is aimed at young paid people aged 22 to 35 and functions similarly to a salary advance or a short-term bridging financial loan. Personal unsecured loans at an interest rate of 0.09 percent per day are available for amounts ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 1 lakh for a period of up to 30 days.
The customer may use their Facebook ID, PAN card number, bank login verification, or statements to apply. It takes roughly an hour for the money to be transferred once used.
“The foundation of EarlySalary is our risk assessment module and decisioning ‘Social Worth Score’ which analyzes an individual’s creditworthiness beyond financial credit rating,” explains Akshay, 35.
A regular credit score and a social media score are included in the score. Within 10 minutes, the individual’s eligibility is determined. NBFCs have funded EarlySalary (non-banking financial companies).
Using a non-traditional approach
According to Akshay while most EarlySalary’s use cases are for lifestyle upkeep such as shopping, vacations, and celebrations, specific financial needs come in for home or city relocation, job changes, and medical crises.
Setting up a financial firm was the next natural step for Ashish and Akshay, former Bajaj Allianz workers. Hemant Kaul, the chairman of their board, suggested meeting Vimal Saboo, a CA with 18 years of experience, when they realized they needed someone with underwriting knowledge. He quickly became a member of the core group. They also understood they needed someone with expertise since the technology was crucial to EarlySalary.
So Akshay felt he’d discovered the last piece of the jigsaw when he met Vivek Jain, a former chief architect at Infosys who now heads the banking technology section.
When they started creating the product, however, they discovered that there were still a lot of elements missing. It was necessary to increase acceptance and topline volume, choose the proper consumers to lend to, and maintain tight control over problematic loans.
To develop a non-traditional approach to credit scoring and decision making, the duo decided to build technology to create mobile and cloud-based decision systems, incorporate data science and risk modeling, work on a digitalized repayment and collections system, and make digital and machine support for the underwriting model.
“The strong aspect was that practically everyone who joined us believed in the trip, and we had about 20 of our key people on board within 20 days of commencing operations,” says Akshay, a former employee of Future Retail Ltd, PolicyBazaar.com, Big Bazaar, and Bajaj Allianz.
The market for payday loans
EarlySalary began in Pune and has expanded to Mumbai, Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Chennai, and Bengaluru.
In the United States, the notion of a “payday loan” is prevalent, with banks and startups participating. The market has piqued the curiosity of investors in the United States. Payday loans are gaining popularity in India. Payday loans are gaining popularity in India.
Aside from EarlySalary, sites like Kadki, located in Pune, use the payday lending idea.
Buddy, supported by Blume Ventures and Tracxn Labs, provides college students with short-term loans that they may pay back monthly online. Flipkart, Amazon, and Snapdeal are also partners.
Future projections and numbers
According to Akshay, their underwriting system uses a machine-learned algorithm called Social Worth to churn out loans to young working professionals. It also claims to have processed over 4,500 client applications across many locations and issued Rs 2 crore in loans.
EarlySalary offers 30-day short-term loans and targets the age group that most conventional banks and lending platforms avoid. The team is also working on new items that will cater to the different wants of the same customers. They received $1.5 million in early finance from Transcorp Group’s Ashok Agarwal and are now searching for the next round of funding.
EarlySalary plans to expand to seven metro cities in the following year, one every 45 days.
“We believe that in the next 24 months, we will be able to develop a loan book of Rs 200 to 300 crore.” According to Akshay, “the firm wants to provide a revolutionary new business model that is destined to alter the loan sector in India.”
