 "Flipkart-backed super.money plans credit and wealth management push")
Flipkart-backed super.money is on an expansion spree and plans to expand its range of offerings in credit and wealth management after launching its operations in July this year.
The Bengaluru-based fintech company is on track to roll out credit products such as credit on Unified Payments Interface (UPI), unsecured credit cards, and personal loans within the first half of the next calendar year (2025).
“In the first quarter of the next calendar year, you should see transaction credit products around credit on UPI taking shape, and unsecured credit cards planned around December this year to January. In the first quarter of 2025, you will see personal loan products on the app,” said Prakash Sikaria, founder and chief executive officer (CEO), super.money.
He added that the company would partner with 10 to 15 banks by mid-2025 to extend personal loans for its customers. The company’s user base currently stands at over seven million.
The confidence to extend credit offerings comes on the back of the firm’s growth in the larger UPI landscape. The fintech has grown to be the sixth largest third-party application provider (TPAP) on the UPI leaderboard, processing over 78 million transactions in November. In the previous month, the app was the 12th largest player in terms of the volume of UPI transactions.
Navi has been another TPAP that has clocked higher UPI volumes on its platform, catapulting the company to be the fourth largest player, data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) shows.
The expansion into unsecured credit also comes at a time when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has taken action against non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) such as DMI Finance and Navi Finserv.
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Last year, the banking regulator hiked risk weights for unsecured personal loans, slowing down growth for the sector.
“There is no concept of MVP (minimum viable product) in fintech anymore because with the changing paradigm, you have to adapt, give impeccable service to customers and have backups. When I said 10 to 15 bank partnerships, it hints that we are working with a host of banks. Even if there is a regulatory action on one, your business doesn't go down,” Sikaria said.
The company made a foray into wealth management products by rolling out fixed deposits for its users last month. The founder plans to launch other offerings in the space such as mutual funds by mid next year.
“From a distribution horizontal platform, gold and mutual funds would come much before futures and options (F&O) and equity-type offerings. I would expect mutual funds before everything else,” he added.
When asked about the company’s plans to apply for an NBFC licence after rolling out personal loans, Sikaria said he would first look at his credit business growth.
“With clarity around digital lending guidelines and first loss default guarantee, our focus has been compliance and building products. I don’t think we need an NBFC licence for that. We need it for other things to make things flawless and hence for phase one of our journey, we just want to solve for the product, distribution and compliances,” he added.
With initial success on UPI, the next focus for the company would be to fine-tune its ‘cross-sell machinery’.
“A lot of focus is on launching newer products, scaling them on top of our base. It involves nudging the right set of users. You will see a lot of product-centric work happening on the consumer side, and new financial products being launched to monetise those users,” he said.
However, despite interest from other fintechs to expand into merchant categories, Sikaria thinks otherwise.
“The interoperable system allows us to operate without having to scale the merchant side. At least for next year, till the time we are getting our consumer engine right, I don't want to distract and focus on the merchant side,” he added.
Larger players such as PhonePe have a merchant base of over 40 million alone. The total base of customers for the fintech major stands at over 500 million.