Gamifying financial products: Interview with Manish Maryada CEO, and co-founder at Fello

By Puja Sharma

Manish Maryada is the CEO and co-founder at Fello. Maryada is responsible for building and executing a high-level growth-driven strategy, cementing strategic partnerships, and managing market dominance while delivering innovation for the customer base.

A part of the FinTech ecosystem for over six years, Manish has been associated with fintech entities like Zaggle as their Associate Vice President – Products, Flobiz, HSBC Retail Banking, and a few others. With his extensive experience in traditional finance and scaling early-stage FinTech startups. Maryada has done his Master’s in Finance from Texas A&M University-Mays Business School.

During its interaction with Maryada, IBS Intelligence sought to understand how they are building a gaming world over the traditional banking ecosystem today.

How is Fello different from any other investment platform?

Fello is a gamified finance application for the Zillenials of India to earn 10% returns and win 1Cr in rewards. Fello is merging the worlds of gaming and finance to make banking fun, easy, and exciting for young Indians.

The firm has built a gaming world over the traditional banking ecosystem so that the current generation of Indians most interestingly financial products in the most interesting way through gamification. The company is inspired by the financial concept of Prize Linked Savings, Premium bonds of the UK, and concepts of behavioral economics.

How Millennials & Zillennial are embracing new and alternative ways of managing their money?

The current generation of young Indians is adopting financial products at a very early age when compared to the previous generations. This is giving them the appetite to explore new and better ways of managing money thus resulting in using various new applications which are making their money-managing experience great. On Fello we have 98% first-time saving and investing users and they love the experience of saving money in the gamified fashion and the rewards associated with it.

60% of the current generation of investors have exposure to cryptocurrencies. That speaks volumes about the level of appetite they have for risk. Right from stocks to cryptos to lending products, they are looking forward to exploring different investment options and have less money in the bank as they realised that the returns on banks are significantly less.

How is the gamification of finance helping young investors?

Gaming is always fun and rewarding. There is gratification associated with it. Right from our young days, we have been inclined towards gamification. For example, our parents used to reward us with gifts, pocket money, etc. whenever we did something good. Similarly, when you save on Fello, it not only serves as an investment but you can play games, earn rewards and grow your investment too. Also, we have built a gamified world where users will be able to level up for every healthy financial activity which has made them inclined towards healthy finances.

This similar trend of gamification helping people adopt healthy habits has been seen not just in fintech but also in healthcare, fitness, etc. because it is deeply embedded in the behavioral psychology of an individual w gamification and incentivization give them gratification upon achieving something.

 What is the future of gamification of finances?

Gamification is going to be one of the strongest boosters of the adaptation of finance and banking at a faster scale. Gamification not just solves the problem of easy onboarding but also long-term retention as well. Recently, one of the largest gamified banking applications “Long game” has been acquired by Trust bank in the US.

Evolve and Trust bank partnered with the largest Prize Linked Banking app in the US, Yotta. Several banks globally have built meta worlds over banking and as per our research we also noticed Indian financial institutions are exploring meta, gamification, etc. So with all these pointers, the future seems optimistic that gamification of banking will be one of the strongest pillars for penetration of banking into the untapped underbanked parts of India as well but at the same time increase the adaptation of new financial products for the new age Indians.