Did you used to get pocket money before the age of 18 to manage your expenses? I personally used to get a fixed & tiny pocket money after 10th, thanks to my parents.

When I was in college, I stayed away from my hometown, in a PG with a roommate, unlike me, he didn’t had a fixed or tiny pocket money, he used to get an X amount from his father whenever the previous X amount got over.

I was always a bit envious, as to why he has a free flowing pocket money, whereas I have to manage everything (Travel, Accommodation & Misc expenses) in a fixed amount.

Fast forward 7 years, I’m a lot thankful to my parents for both –

# giving me pocket money, and

# keeping it fixed (mostly) on a monthly basis.

This helped me in learning how to manage my finances better, which definitely helped, once I got into a job.

Btw this is exactly what Sambhav Jain, guest of our today’s episode is trying to do with his company Fampay.

Fampay, being a virtual card prepaid card for teenagers, enables them to do online transactions and manage their finances, eventually educating them to be more financially aware down the line as grown-ups.

Recently after adding 2 million+ registered users on platform Fampay raised USD 38 million in funding from Elevation Capital and others.

During the podcast, Sambhav shares with us how he came across the idea behind Fampay, what were the initial challenges when they approached several banks with this concept and more.

Notes –

02:02 – Graduating from IIT Roorkee and working in Product roles

06:28 – Concept of pocket money in western countries

09:14 – Problem statement of financial literacy among kids in India

16:25 – Initial discussion with Elevation Capital & achieving PMF

20:05 – Driving hyper-growth with campus ambassadors

28:14 – Building the product like a community rather than a transactional app

30:02 – Initial response from traditional banks

32:53 – Working of a Fampay wallet

34:48 – Adoption of technology among teenagers

 

Read the full transcript here:

 

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 00:02

Hi, this is Siddhartha Ahluwalia. Welcome to the 100x entrepreneur podcast. Today we have with us Sambhav Jain, founder of Fampay. Sambhav, along with his co-founder Kush Taneja, launched Fampay in 2019. Fampay is a FinTech solution that helps children below the age of 18 assert their own financial independence via an app that’s designed just for them. Fampay also has a numberless card, which protects their identity and protects them from theft. The app gives children the power to do online transactions without having to ask their parents to input banking details, or wait them to give them otps. With 1.35 million users, fampay is one of the biggest FinTech companies dominating the teenage finance segment in India. Welcome Sambhav

 

Sambhav Jain 00:56

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the warm welcome And great to be here. Yeah.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:04

I would love to learn how did you get that insight to solve this problem.

 

Sambhav Jain 01:12

Um, so again, now we did not actually stumble upon this problem. It was a it was quite a journey. So, I’ll just share the brief story. So, both me and Kush, we graduated out of IIT Roorkee, in 2019, and we started building fampay, in our final semester when we were still in college. Right. So, we both know each other for first year of college, we’ve been friends for four years. And throughout college, we’ve worked on different products together different things together, within campus, and we used to do just different internships right, in different startups. So, while we were interning from different startups in different roles, from product to marketing to business operations, we were very clear that okay, startup is the space where we want to be this is this is super exciting, like you can have great impact in you can leverage technology to create, like, huge impact. And we were fascinated by the kind of, so my first internship was at trivago. And it was just a two- or three-year-old organization back then. And it was already competing with the likes of the traditional players who have been in the industry for decades. Right. So yeah, so we were quite fascinated with that. So, coming to the final year, I want to, I wanted to join an early-stage startup with a three four-member team, where I can play more of more of a multiple hat. role, right? And Kush like I want to start something of my own. And so, both of us didn’t actively pursue placements in the campus. And yeah, we had a lot of time, because we were not preparing for placement. So, and we used to stay in the same hostel same closes two rooms apart. So, we just used to go to each other. He used to come over to ideas every day, I used to go over to startups, just to have a discussion on how’s the startup? How’s this idea? How do you like the product? And yeah, like a few days later, I started going to problems every day. That Okay, what do you think about this, and we used to just brainstorm different problems, different startups, and it was always a very interesting discussion. So, so in that period, we were helping a bunch of our friends through the placements, right? Through the interviews through the tests, and all of that. So, a lot of our friends, like, who did not code for three years, they started coding. And when we asked them, okay, bro, we know that you don’t like coding? Are you coding? So, they were like, Okay, if I get this job, I’m going to earn this much, and my life is going to be settled, right? That’s the typical response we used to get. And, like, both me and Kush couldn’t understand how is your life getting settled? If you’re not looking at? What’s the company I’m going to work in? What’s the product? What are the people like? What’s your work profile? Right? Like, people were right to go in northeastern states in the minds if the company’s paying good, right. So we couldn’t understand like, what’s the How is that decision making? structured in the minds of students? And we came to a discussion where we were like, people are just looking at money as one factor while making the decision for the job. And not all the other factors, though. It’s a very important decision that you’re going to spend on next few years of your life. This is going to be starting point of your career, the job, but they were just looking at money. And for us it was like money is becoming the bottleneck to take the right decision. Because if you remove money from the equation, right, the answer on what they would want to do what probably what they would be doing would be very different. So, we were just having casual discussions around that, that why do people look at money this way. And we were discussing, I remember us discussing that. In India, since childhood, no one is comfortable about talking about money to the kids, right? schools don’t teach you about money, banks don’t teach you parents don’t really talk about money very openly. So, finance is always considered as a very serious subject that no one talks about. Whereas if you look at Western countries, there are concepts of pocket money, that it consists of working early on to earn for yourself, maybe it can be just working at McDonald’s, right? But you know, that, okay, I can work and I can own this much. And by earning this much I can on this lifestyle in which I can party this much shop this much travel this much, right? So they gain their financial independence early on, and they start taking their own decisions. And life is not about survival anymore. They know that they can survive. And now they have to figure out what they want to do in life. Whereas in India, there is no concept of pocket money. There is no concept of earning, it’s always on demand that I’ll go up to my parent, I’ll ask for 200 bucks, and they’ll get it. Right. And and we realize that okay, this is this is why, because they don’t experience financial independence. By the time you reach college. You are not thinking beyond survival, survival is the biggest question and you’re like, Okay, if I don’t have a job at hand, how am I going to earn? How am I going to survive? Right? So, they start thinking, figuring out okay, this is a company that’s coming to the campus. So, I’ll probably sit give this test here this interview, and I’ll, earn this month, so that’s my financial independence. So yeah, that those were the discussions we were having. And we realize, like, kids are so much dependent on the parents in India, that if a parent tells them, okay, you can’t buy a 20,000 phone, you’ll just buy 17,000 phones. I can’t argue, right? I just have to accept it. I don’t know. Like, where those 3000 bucks would make a difference. In a year long financials for my family, probably if I get my own pocket money, I’ll cut down my expenses on food ordering, or shopping and save 3000 bucks. It’s not a big deal, right? But I don’t get to make that decision. I don’t get to make those sacrifices; I don’t get to fight for what I really want. So inherently, kids become handicapped in taking the right decisions, taking control in their own choices in life. So yeah, like having that financial independence, freedom. Financial Literacy was completely missing in India. And I’m not even talking about literacy to the point where what’s a credit card score, and what’s your credit score, what’s how to invest how to save taxes, that’s too far off. They don’t even know how to look at money. What’s personal finance, like, this is a big problem to solve. That is how we, like we were just passionate about solving this problem for financial literacy, independence and freedom. And you’re like, let’s, let’s bring in the culture of pocket money to India, let’s build something where parents will send in pocket money, kids can spend it through a card or something. And we will gamify the experience on the app through which will literate them financially on how to spend, how to save how to budget, etc. Right. Um, so that was a thought. And we had just one semester in front of us before we graduated. So, we moved to Bangalore, because staying for years in Roorkee. It’s a it’s a very small town, we did not even know, what’s the situation and in the urban cities, how are kids spending? None of that. So we came to Bangalore, for some initial research. And we used to go to the malls. And we used to just meet kids there who were like playing in Smash and all gaming follows. And we just ask them, like, do you have 10 minutes to chart we are students from iit, and we are working on a project. They were happy to chat. And that is where we got the golden insight. Like 90% of the kids, we spoke to did not have bank accounts. So, all the kids that we spoke to they had smartphones and they were using internet they were already spending on like swiggy, Flipkart, Amazon Uber Netflix everywhere. But when we ask them how do you spend their like we borrow cash from our parents, we borrow our parents debit card or credit card. Whenever you’re shopping online, we have to borrow or like we have to call them for OTP. Right? These are the kinds of problems kids told us really then very keep your money. They’re like we don’t keep any money. We just like take 200 bucks out. Every time we go out, we keep 500 bucks in a secret pocket. So, there were very interesting insights that we got in those conversations. And we realized that this is the most tech savvy audience, right? Who trust digital first products and who can actively use it really well? But they don’t have access to even making digital payments, right? Because to UPI was going crazy in 2019. And to have a UPI, do you need to have a bank account, to have a debit card, you need to have a bank account, you can’t get a credit card below 18. And if you look at India’s population, 40% of India’s population is below 18. 40%. So, it’s like whenever we are talking about the next half billion users on the internet, we often forget that majority of them are going to be minors. Right? A million of teens will get their first smartphones. So, we saw it as a big opportunity. This was a it was clearly a big untapped market. Nobody was focusing on it. Even if you look, look today, right? Every product is being built for adults. So yeah, that is when we were like, Okay, this is bang on, like, but financial literacy and independence is too far, oh, they don’t even have access to financial tools, right to digital payments to banking. So, let’s build that. And on top of it, we’ll build in features to help them get to the financial literacy, and independent. So yeah, that is the brief story on how we thought of solving for financial literacy and independence. And we got to know that there’s no access to teens. It’s an untapped market. And yeah, that that is where we thought of building first payments up for them on top, you’ll start building banking and all. So, you have it with, with fampay, that is when the idea was born. And we applied to Y Combinator while we were in our final semester through our hostel rooms. So yeah, that is where the journey began.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 12:09

And at what point did you realize you had a product market fit? After yc? Or before yc? Was it?

 

Sambhav Jain 12:17

No, it was far. It was. It was quite long after that, because when we applied to yc, we were not launched. And we had a lot of things to figure out being first time entrepreneurs still in college. We had to figure out a lot of a lot of FinTech guidelines, right. How do you go about the regulations? How do you go about manufacturing a card? How do you go about launching it are the kinds of certifications and licenses you would need? So, it’s a very regulated industry, right? It’s not like a social app that you just code overnight, and you can make live. Last year, it’s just been almost a year. And we, after we raised our seed round, so we raised our seed round in, in September 2019, we started building the team start building the product after that, and we were ready to go live in April, actually. But that is when COVID came in. And so, we had to, like just postpone the plans of launch. So we went live in August. And we feel that we hit PMF. end of December, or early January this year. Yeah.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 13:32

And when did sequoia around happened after yc?

 

Sambhav Jain 13:36

Sequoia around happened, just like around the demo day. So yc has this demo day, And we just closed the round before Demo Day.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 14:07

Yeah. It was a 4 million round, I believe

 

Sambhav Jain 14:10

it was a 4.7 million round. It was led by a venture highway and Sequoia.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 14:16

Okay, and you got in touch with venture highway parallelly because of yc.

 

Sambhav Jain 14:21

Yeah, so all of so as I mentioned, like most of the investors, like reach out to yc startups just to have a conversation, getting to know the founders early on, see which companies are doing interesting things.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 14:36

And can you share more? What and this are September 2019? Right, which you shared that this round happened of 4.7 million. September 2019.

 

Sambhav Jain 14:46

Yeah, we announced it much later. We closed it in September, but we announced it in March 2020. And yeah, we just didn’t want to announce it back then. We wanted to first build up product, we are the capital, we are the resources. So yeah, got it.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 15:05

And when did elevation round happened? Like what excited elevation to build a such a large round? And yours is one of the largest series an in India, of 38 million. Yeah, so, so what were your discussions if you can share with elevation with Ravi, or that gave him the insight that this can become really a large category?

 

Sambhav Jain 15:26

Um, so, so actually, elevation was the first VC we spoke we ever spoke to. So right after we went in, like we got into yc, the very next day, they reached out to us just to have a casual conversation. And we’ve been in touch since back then, right. So, we’ve been constantly charting for two years, they’ve been looking at the progress, how we were building things, how we how we were approaching this market, however, very thoughtful about our branding our product. And so, we were very comfortable. For two years, we were following each other’s journey, we used to chat regularly. And, once. So when we launched in August 2020, after launching in his first numberless card, we, for the first eight to 10 months, we were actually growing 100% month on month. Right? So, by December, it was it was quite clear that okay, this is we have hit PMF, there’s a certain poll that we were able to grow so fast, at with so with very less marketing effort, we were actually able to grow through reference through network effects through social elements. So that is what gave them the confidence that okay, this market has the right opportunity. And they really like our approach. So, most of the conversation was around how we are looking ahead. How, why do we think there’s opportunity in the market? So definitely, they were trying to pick our brain. And, and whenever we have spoken to elevation, I think, I think they feel that okay, the, the best part that that they like is that we have the unfair advantage of being closer to our tg, right. So if there can be someone who can build for this Tg, they have to actually understand what they go through, right.

 

17:25

 

 

Sambhav Jain 17:27

So that can be my laptop is about to die,

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 17:30

you’re pausing it. And how did you decide on the quantum size? And what was the month if you remember, when elevation committed and what were the users back then when elevation committed?

 

Sambhav Jain 17:45

So, when elevation committed it was back in March, we had just said, a million plus registered users on the platform. So yeah, and on the quantum, we were actually not planning to raise such a big round. We were planning to really raise a little so close to our 25 to 30 million rounds. But it just happened that when we started having conversations, it everything that we were just chatting about the different numbers and how even Sequoia is existing investors were keen on participating in the round, right? So yeah, we just happen to have them both, which actually increased the round size

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 18:40

grid, and what led to so much viral growth of users between August and March. Were you acquiring these users through Facebook, Instagram, or through other organic channels that you built?

 

Sambhav Jain 18:53

on I’m so No, actually. We started ads quite late. We were not advertising for the first few months. Most of the growth was coming organically through referrals. And our launch strategy was very focused on a community first approach. So, what we were what we did was we added the top 200 schools in India. And we found the five most popular kids and all of these schools. And we got them on boarded as a kind of influencers teen influence, or you can call them brand ambassadors. And it was one of the first I would say one of the first very unique school brand ambassador program. And what’s unique with school kids is that like probably college students might not feel great about being a brand ambassador for a company but while you’re in school, Because the exposure is so less, it feels very unique that you’re working closely with the brand. Right? And we were very strategic on how we are putting them out there. It was not like, okay, you get us 10 downloads and you’ll get 100 bucks no, he was just like, okay, you’re going to create a lot of content with us. And you’re going to share feedback we are going to listen to you are like our brand advocates. You’re like, our, our, our first product, first users, right, we are taking feedback with them constantly, and all of that. So yeah, that is how we got the first 500-1000 users from the top 200 schools reaching out to them. And these are the kids who are like, the head boys and girls and the performance in the schools. Right. And when they started putting up force on Okay, I have got my own card. And when the most five popular kids in every school, but certainly talking about fampay and getting their own card, and having a having a great design of the card and unboxing experience definitely helped get started to get FOMO. They were like, okay, even I want this card, where did you get this card from? So, so we had a very, we were very strategic on, we should not spend even a single penny until we find the first 1000 users who actually love the product. Right? So we used to, if you if you go search, fampay on YouTube will find like a lot of videos created organically by users who are just unboxing the card. And it’s like they remember it like their first bicycle or phone. Right. It’s their first card in their life. So, they flaunt it, they want to flaunt it in the stories, they were creating boomerangs reels, and unboxing videos. So that was being very close to them, we got our first 5000 users like, definitely, it was very easy to like expand in those networks. Like with every kid, we used to easily get like four to five other guests. So, we grew from 5000 to 10,000. From there. And that is when we started pulling different growth levers like we started adding referrals, we experimented a lot. Then with reference, we grow from like 10,000 to 25-30,000. And that is when we were like let’s do our first influencer campaign. We got Tanmay on board, we did a campaign with them. And after that, I think when we reached out first of all first 40-50,000 consumers, we did not do any advertising on Facebook or Instagram. And after that we actually started with performance.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 22:50

And you have a very unique acquisition channel on discord communities. Can you tell us about that?

 

Sambhav Jain 22:56

Yeah. So, the whole team actually tries to live life like a Gen Z and like 60-70% of the team is actually Gen Z. We’re very young. And so, we understand what teenagers want, right? We understand it very easily. It’s not difficult for us to understand. Whereas if you look at, I usually give this example. So, like in our times, we used to get happy by asking for a remote-control car to our parents. But today kids will be like, I want a green screen. I want a podcast setup and I want to become a YouTube influencer. Right? The Times have changed so much. So, we keep those psyche in mind. And we follow teenagers, like what they’re doing. And discord is like the new Gen Z platform where most of the teenagers are super active. Most of the game are streamers YouTubers, they have their discord communities and it, it only made sense to try it out, we were speaking to a few of our users and looking at the data, we got to know that okay, a lot of a lot of our users are actually using discord for different things. So that is when we It started with an experiment of let’s try building this. And let’s see if this picks up. But it has turned out to be really good. So, it’s turning out to be like the new way of support where kids definitely get to socialize, talk about the product, discuss different things, we get to know what they actually want, how they are talking about the product. And it’s very difficult to build that kind of community for adults because adults are busy in life, right? But teenagers have a lot of time they just want to speak to other friends make friends socialize. So, what we do is even when we get some queries on our social media channels, we just send them the discord community link and we’re like, okay, you can just join the community and ask us any questions. So, kids just go to discord they asked like, Okay, I’m stuck with KYC What should I do? When other kids end up responding and solving those queries. So, it’s an it’s a very it’s a very fun community. We do a lot of events, games. We just do some movie nights where we are just streaming movies on Sunday. And a lot of kids just come on friendship day. They also, we had three movie kinds of a marathon. So yeah, it’s a, it’s a great community.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 25:29

And how many members you have on that community today?

 

Sambhav Jain 25:33

I think it’s a it’s close to 10,000. already. I am not updated with the last number.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 25:43

And how’s the journey from 50,000 users to a currently 1.5 mil? Am I right? The current number?

 

Sambhav Jain 25:50

No, it’s so 1.5. mil was just in the last quarter, it’s 2 million plus, the journey has been having been great. As I mentioned, it’s about time that we started with those community initiatives we were growing with just invite only from being just an invite only to then letting the users enter. Getting to 10,000 opening referrals, we experimented a lot on referrals, like what is the right referrals strategy that will work. So, growing from there to like 25-30,000 and doing our first influencer campaign. So, like, as we kept on progressing in the journey, like we had to evolve ourselves and our growth strategy, right. So, the journey has been incredible. The first eight to 10 months, we were growing 100% month on month. And every morning. It’s It was not WhatsApp; it is not Instagram that we used to open. Like, even when I was half asleep, I just used to open and check out the number of users we have got. Overnight, right. Every morning. That was the first thing like most of the team members used to check like, what’s the volume of transactions? What are the number of users? So yeah, it’s been amazing. We then started performance marketing; we scaled our influencer marketing. First, we were only doing it on YouTube. Then we also started on Instagram. So, we kept on expanding our acquisition channels. We also started; we were also doing bunch of things on the product. Right, we also launched in January, we launched our loyalty program, where we introduced our in-app currency fam points. So, what every transaction that the kids do they earn fam points. And with fam points, it’s not like just a digital currency that you get with a credit card or debit card that is just used to avail offers. With the points, you can do much more things like donation, participate in different giveaways, and contests. We also conduct a lot of master classes where we help kids to learn, right? So, it’s not kids don’t look at it as a payment’s app or banking app. It’s like a community, actual community for them, where they can just come to have fun, socialize, learn, and do different things.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 28:20

And what’s the revenue model?

 

Sambhav Jain 28:23

Um, so currently we are. So currently we are through every sale of card. So the physical card is not given for free. And we earn interchange on every card transaction. So for every card transaction on. so those are the two as of now, but yeah, we’re working on some interesting things for the next 12 months.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 28:42

And what do you have crossed 1 million by now?

 

Sambhav Jain 28:47

Um, no, no, not yet.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 28:51

And if you can tell, you know, in your early journey, how are the traditional banks responding when you took the concept of fampay to them for partnership? Because you would have utilized an underlying banking layer to build on top of it?

 

Sambhav Jain 29:06

Yeah, it was a, it was challenging. In the beginning, I think for most of the FinTech entrepreneurs, especially first-time entrepreneurs, you will listen, the same answer that they had to go to every bank, they had to like struggle for five, six months just to get the right partnership just to get it through. Just to help the bank understand the vision, what we’re trying to build align them. So, you had the first few months ago, it’s quite difficult. Because we were not just first-time entrepreneurs, but we were very young ourselves, right? We were just out of college. So, and, like, maybe the banging books are not really accustomed to dealing with so young founders, so they’re like, okay, they used to consider us as kids, okay, these like these kids are wanting to build for kids and minors. The segment is not was very untapped. It was very new. And none of the banks, banks usually see a lot of opportunity in the adult’s market. And so, it was difficult for us to make them understand that, okay. Like, nobody has been able to see the market in this market, that is why we have the biggest opportunity, because we see, and we understand what we can build out of this. So, it was it was quite difficult. We were badly having conversations with multiple banks, same conversation, same pitch over and over again. And it’s like, there’s so much hierarchy in the banks that every time you go to the next meeting, there’s two people new who have joined in, and you have to give the old context again, right. So, but yeah, it was, it was fun, got to learn a lot of things, how FinTech works, how partnerships work, and how, what are the kinds of different licenses you need? How does KYC work? And it, it feels like you’ve done a PhD on KYC. Alone. We have worked so much on that. Yeah.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 31:12

Which was the first bank that got converted and agreed to partnership.

 

Sambhav Jain 31:16

Oh, it’s idfc first bank,

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 31:18

and how much meetings it took you to, to convert idfc first,

 

Sambhav Jain 31:23

um, I don’t remember the number of meetings there. But it was it was close to five, five months, 4-5 months.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 31:34

And today, like idfc would be very happy with partnership.

 

Sambhav Jain 31:39

we still, we still working with them. And it’s only we haven’t gone to a multi-bank partnership. So yeah, it’s nice.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 31:51

And how do you do it right, you open a child account under a parent account, it’s a completely new account for a child with parents or guardian.

 

Sambhav Jain 31:59

It’s not a bank account. It’s kind of a wallet. It’s a prepaid account. So, you come, and it completes the KYC, the parent company, so KYC, but the kid gets an independent account, where parents can load in money, they can fund this account, and the kid can start spending through the card.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 32:18

And what are the insights that you have got on this journey? What are the expectations of finance, different of under 18, versus those of college goers versus those who are early in jobs?

 

Sambhav Jain 32:36

Um, so the market the market is very different. So, I, a lot of people confuse millennials and Gen Z’s, right. But Gen Z is a totally different altogether different generation because they haven’t seen a world without internet. So, since childhood, they’ve been accustomed to using YouTube, Netflix, and all of these platforms. So, the quality of product that they expect, is top notch. Right, I’ll just give you an example. I have a, I have a two-year-old niece. And she doesn’t know how to read and write. But she knows what the YouTube icon where to go to watch videos to surf through her favorite video just by looking at the thumbnail. And when she clicks on the thumbnail. If an ad pops up, she knows that this is not what I was looking for what was supposed to come, she waits for five seconds to skip the ad. She doesn’t know that it’s an ad and you can skip but she waits for five seconds, she knows that something will be here. When the button will expand, I’ll have to click to watch my video. So that adoption to technology that tech savviness the ability to learn right? It’s very fast with teenagers, it’s the habit building age. So, if it today, if it today, go and download snapchat. You’d find it super complicated; you wouldn’t understand what gives teenagers the kick to use it. Right? But kids use it like right for like left swipe right swipe, they just are very fast with it. So that’s one of the big, big really big differences that teenagers are at their habit building age. And while millennials aren’t they’re much more accustomed to being comfortable with their own lives and not adopting two things. But teenagers adopted things very faster. And second is like teenagers may not be the decision makers at home but they are the decision influencers. So just look at any purchase that that is made in home right we’d a TV or car, phone, refrigerator or anything. Parents go to their kids and ask like which one to buy. Right? It is a kid who’s influencing those big purchasing all of those decisions. Even after not being the decision maker. They’re heavily the decision influences because they go and research on which are the best specs which color should we buy the car for and quite like everything, right? So, kids are essentially the CTOs of the households. So, if it’s anything that’s related to tech, if, if my parents want to like, just learn on how to forward a WhatsApp message or how to set up a dp on Facebook, they just go to that kid. And Kid is helping them to learn those platforms. So, what one interesting we that we’ve been seeing is that we have a lot of grocery transactions happening through fampay. So, what moms do is moms just fund their kids account. And they just tell them, okay, you, they might be sending lists on WhatsApp, or whatever. And kids end up buying the whole grocery for the household. Right? Because parents are too much intimidated by these platforms and these apps that I don’t want to use it and kids end up transacting. Right. So that is, so those are the kinds of things that we’ve been seeing very unique. And parents are just like, kids, we’re already doing all of these things like even my parents today, no matter if we are running a company, or whatsoever, my parents call me up and they’re like, book me a ticket. Right? And I end up booking their tickets, right? So, it’s that behavior, that teenagers were already transacting a lot, but they did not have access to being independently.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 36:22

And after having fampay, What’s the typical, you know, response of your users, right? When the first time see their first time getting this freedom? Is this something which they were expecting that this would happen? Or is it something which takes them off the roof?

 

Sambhav Jain 36:44

It’s, it takes them off the roof, actually takes them off the roof. If you get a chance, after this podcast, you should definitely go and check out on Instagram and just look at the comments on a like any any of the posts, right? You’ll see the kind of excitement that the kids have, and the kinds of things that they say about fampay and how it’s adding value to their lives. That is what that is what is amazing. We clearly see that enthusiasm in them on using the platform. And it’s very fulfilling.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 37:18

And can you share? What keeps you so sharp? keeps you learning always? Is it the books you read the people you interact with? What you do?

 

Sambhav Jain 37:33

It’s is, is that we are still students, we feel in our minds that we are still students, and that is what helps us be unconventional? Because we are always curious, we are always asking questions. So, wherever you’re talking to definitely we speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, for if there’s anything that we stuck out, we follow a lot of different entrepreneurs we like listen to podcasts, like these different journeys and all of that. But I think what keeps us learning is that we, we are not letting go of a student mindset. Just to give you an example, like no one question that why do we need numbers to be on the card? We just had the basic question that Okay, why do we need physical? Like, why do we need numbers on the physical card? Because if the card gets lost, you’re going to end up losing so much of information to a stranger, right? So, we’re like, can we remove this? And because anyway, when I’m transacting online with the physical card, I don’t need numbers, I just need my pin, I’m swiping the card. And for shopping online, I just need the numbers. So, we can push the numbers on the app that you can just open the app, copy the number and do online transactions. And for offline transactions, you have your card. So just I think questioning the basic things, helps us do unconventional things. And the learning comes from just being curious about different things asking questions around.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 39:05

Thank you so much. Some of it was a pleasure to hear a very different, very fresh perspective on how products are getting built, like completely new, which you know, I’ve seen on this podcast, and it’s very fresh to see how you thought on first principles to build for your users. So thanks so much.

 

Sambhav Jain 39:27

Thank you so much for inviting me. It was great chatting

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