CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Nishchay Ag, Co-founder & CEO, Jar
Could you share some details about the journey of establishing Jar and its mission within the fintech industry?
Answer: Jar was founded about three years ago during the first wave of COVID-19, making us a true product of the pandemic era. Coming from a small town and a simple middle-class family, I’ve witnessed first-hand the difference between middle-class families of the 80’s and 90’s vs. today. While banking and payments have seen significant advancements, savings, investments, credit, and insurance still have a long way to go, even in the 21st century.
Back in 2020, only 23 million people were investing in the stock market, just 25 million had credit cards, and fewer than 10 million had purchased insurance digitally. In stark contrast, around 350 million people were using UPI! This disparity highlighted a major gap–existing financial products were primarily in English and focused on equity markets and mutual funds, which are asset classes that the common man didn’t understand or maybe trust.
Recognizing this gap, we felt there was a real opportunity to address the unmet needs of everyday Indians. And so we aimed to create a simple savings platform that encouraged a basic habit–the habit of saving–using an asset class that the common man could understand and trust – Gold.
Our mission at Jar is to shatter psychological barriers to saving and investing, thus spearheading the Financial Fitness revolution for Bharat. We believe that simplifying the savings journey and lowering entry barriers can help customers across India save more easily and efficiently. Our core vision has always been to simplify financial access and facilitate all stages of the financial journey for Indians across social classes.
What were some of the key technological challenges Jar faced while scaling from 6 million to 20 million users, and how were they addressed?
When we speak of technology, we tend to limit its definition to encompass only ‘engineering implementation’. In reality, technological challenges encompass a hybrid of Engineering, infrastructure, UX and Ecosystem level challenges.
On the engineering side, the primary challenges revolved around the rapid pace of scaling and ensuring all partners could keep up with this growth. While we were fortunate to have some of the best engineers in the industry, capable of addressing internal technical challenges, scaling external service providers presented significant hurdles. Whether it was payment services, digital gold providers, or simple analytics solutions, our effectiveness was limited by the capacity of our weakest link.
To overcome these challenges, we engaged in continuous efforts and multiple iterations to help our partners upgrade their architectures. A significant breakthrough came from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), who consistently enhanced their UPI infrastructure and improved integration with all national banks, ensuring a reliable experience for all users.
In our pursuit of seamless scalability, we also built our in-house digital gold stack, which played a crucial role in enabling rapid growth. Additionally, we integrated with multiple payment partners to ensure redundancy and reliability.
Now for the other factors:
- Device Fragmentation: In India we have more than 50 Phone brands, each having multiple models with varying storage, battery, screen and connectivity. A diverse configuration can often complicate the definition of baselines, which in turn affects app integration and, eventually, the user experience.
- Network Type & Bandwidth: In India it is common to hop from 4G to 3G to sometimes Edge and Wi-Fi all the time. This also is accounted for while designing APIs and Memory optimisation for transactions. A lot of dynamic optimisation goes into ensuring that the app remains fast and responsive in any given network condition.
- Service Reliability: There are many moving parts like Payment Gateway, PSP, UPI, Bank and Credit Card Processors, KYC Software, UIDAI etc. Services can be slow, down or unavailable. We should be able to route, que, schedule, decline, or retry without being interrupted.
All these efforts were undertaken within a constrained budget, making efficiency and strategic planning vital to our success.
Security is a critical aspect when it comes to transactions. How has the adoption of Kotlin Multiplatform (KMM) benefited Jar in terms of bringing in efficiency and cost savings for the company?
The adoption of Kotlin Multiplatform (KMM) has been instrumental in revolutionising our approach, enabling us to write core logic once in Kotlin and seamlessly share it across iOS and Android platforms. This approach has reduced our development costs by 30–40% while ensuring feature parity across platforms. As early adopters of this technology in mobile app development, our tech stack is not only cutting-edge but also tailored to simplify India’s financial fitness journey with unprecedented ease and accessibility.
How does Jar stay ahead of technological trends and ensure it remains a leader in the fintech space?
At Jar, we utilise cutting-edge technologies to redefine the financial landscape. Our core mission is to cultivate a habit of saving through behavioural economics rather than simply providing financial tools.
Jar offers a seamless investment journey that takes just 45 seconds to start, allowing customers to begin saving from as little as ₹10 in 24K, 99.9% pure digital gold. Our product integrates savings with spending through a digital piggy bank-like round-off method, leveraging the UPI 2.0 framework for easy daily savings and investments via UPI mandates.
For instance, if a user hasn’t opened the app in five months but has set up three SIPs, other apps might simply display their portfolio status. In our app, if a user is actively saving ₹50 daily and returns after 20 days of inactivity, we highlight their additional savings and the amount of gold accumulated during that period. This approach encourages users with immediate wins.
We’ve also developed interactive flows and gamified engagement to nudge users towards daily saving habits. This approach increases their awareness of spending and saving behaviours, resulting in tangible improvements. On average, our users save 10% to 20% more by the fourth month compared to when they started. By the end of one year, savings nearly double. And in 24 months, users are saving almost 1.7 times more than their initial investment.
This is how Jar builds a habit, slowly and gradually, by reinforcing and nudging good savings behaviour.
Given that you are receiving an equal level of engagement from customers across both metro and non-metro cities, what factors do you believe have contributed to increasing awareness among consumers from non-metro cities about buying gold digitally? Additionally, in your opinion, what role has technology played in reaching such a wide audience?
India is on the cusp of transitioning from a 100% cash economy to a digital, cashless economy. This transition has happened rapidly due to strong support from financial services companies focused on innovation rather than profit pools. These companies ensure financial services are well-distributed, promoting inclusion so that even the last village in the most remote district can access the same services as someone in Bangalore.
Several factors have contributed to raising awareness among consumers in non-metro cities about digital gold purchases. Financial services companies have played a pivotal role by expanding their reach and promoting financial inclusion initiatives. Moreover, technology has been instrumental in reaching a broad audience. The widespread availability of smartphones and affordable data has made digital platforms more accessible. This accessibility has enabled consumers in non-metro areas to engage with and trust digital gold-buying options, contributing to increased awareness and adoption.
Jar has hopped on a train of inclusion and digital transformation, spearheading a financial fitness revolution for Bharat.
How do you think the emerging technologies will shape the future of Jar and also other financial sectors?
Innovation is happening rapidly across the fintech sector. Account aggregators have significantly improved data management, but their adoption across all banks and broader availability are still needed. With the advent of AI and ML, better models can be developed to identify patterns and enhance underwriting.
Additionally, there are popular services in the West that help people build their credit history. Adoption of these emerging technologies will undoubtedly shape the future of all the financial sector by providing better data solutions, improving risk management, and enabling more personalised financial services.
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