Pocket money platform for teens: Interview with Mukund Rao, co-founder, Muvin

By Puja Sharma

Muvin is India’s teen-centric pocket money app offering a safe & secure platform to conduct online & offline transactions easily. Headquartered out of Bengaluru, muvin (powered by RuPay) offers the one-of-a-kind prepaid card for teens – ‘muvinCard’ which provides the convenience of online payments along with the power of a contactless card while making payments offline.

Mukund Rao, the co-founder of Muvin, is an accomplished business leader with experience across financial services and technology. Former Capital Markets Head at Mindtree, Mukund founded derivIT in 2007 and grew it across 7 countries with a team of 400+ employees. He subsequently exited derivIT to Luxoft in 2017. He has completed his education at the Bangalore University, Ecole des Ponts Business School.

In conversation with Rao, IBS intelligence discussed how Muvin is offering a secure platform to conduct payments for teenagers.

What are the factors fueling the growth of pocket money apps in India?

India currently has over 200 million teenagers and young adults, who are opinionated when it comes to the choices that they make on a day-to-day basis within their families- across food, fashion, gadgets, and many more. Yet the digital native generation conducts over 80% of their transactions in cash with little exposure to the concept of money.

Teens are becoming financially independent much earlier as compared to a few decades ago. Boosting their financial knowledge at the school level will redefine the way they understand the value of money, and learn how to save and spend wisely- and pocket money apps like Muvin are addressing these areas of concern.

With the introduction of pocket money apps targeted specifically at teens, the notion of concentrating on this young customer group has evolved. Pocket money apps for teens are employing the use of new-age technologies like AI, big-data analysis, and cloud computing and are fundamentally transforming the notion of digital transactions and financial literacy in India.

What is the future strategy of growth for the company?

We are a digital platform catering to India’s teens spread across tier I and II cities. We are also working towards expanding our current registered user base from over 250,000 to one million by December ‘22. We have plans of enhancing the product and introducing several features over the next two-three quarters that will substantially upgrade our users’ experience. Our ambition is to enable 100 million financially literate students in the next 10 years who are confident in making the right financial choices by the age of 21.

Aligned with our mission of addressing the financial needs of India’s teens and working towards their financial literacy, we keep introducing curated offers and promotions tailored for our user segments to drive usage.  We have planned some large-scale financial literacy initiatives at schools across India over the next few quarters to further drive awareness.

Please shed some light on the product offerings of muvin. And, what are the key features of the product offerings, and how does it work?

The vision to make India’s teens financially literate cannot be achieved unless parents are involved. Therefore partnering with the parent community is an integral part of our growth roadmap and vision. muvin empowers parents to transfer allowance directly into their child’s wallet, who can then use it digitally or through their prepaid card.

While parents/guardians can create an account to enable their dependents/children with an independent wallet, Muvin also empowers India’s college-going students to set up their wallets to conduct transactions.

As part of our focus on amplifying financial literacy amongst India’s teens, the Muvin app offers an exhaustive library of enriching content to demystify concepts related to managing finance. We recently partnered with Monika Halan, an entrusted Author and Speaker to curate and address theme-based topics in an easy, fun, and simplified manner. From taxes to what banking truly is, Muvin is covering the fundamentals and more via rich byte-sized videos and short blogs that are relevant for teens.

How is digital payment enhancing the experience through pocket money apps?

Being a 100% digital platform with a physical card for offline transactions, providing a seamless and unparalleled user experience is of prime importance to pocket money apps like Muvin. As a fast, reliable, and contactless way to make payments, digital techniques have helped us to deliver an enhanced payment experience to teens, which they love. In addition to ease of use and convenience, digital payments offer contactless transactions—a safety feature that every teen and their parents are looking for.

We endeavor to leverage the different digital payment upgrades that would allow us to offer an improved user experience. At muvin, we will soon be introducing QR and UPI-based payments for users who will do a full KYC.  The full KYC will also enable users to enjoy much higher transaction limits than the current Rs 10,000 per month available to min KYC users.

What is the future of pocket money apps and offerings in the country?

The emergence of pocket money apps and youth-centric neobanks are disrupting the more than $300 billion FinTech market in India, according to a Redseer report. The employment of new-age technology is helping youth focussed financial products take a consumer segment-centric approach to fulfill the basic payment needs of India’s teens. These financial products for teens are playing the dual role of enabling transactions (online & offline) while simultaneously building financial literacy & independence among them. Through these products, players like us have struck a chord and are steadily forging deeper ties with India’s GenZ while disrupting the FinTech ecosystem in India.

With new players entering this space, neobanks for the youth are fast becoming a competitive digital banking landscape. The sector has witnessed exponential growth in the last 5 years. In terms of transaction value, the Indian Neobanking ecosystem is expected to reach $47.94 billion in 2022 setting the groundwork for substantial growth potential in the coming years.