Serial entrepreneurs Veer Mishra and Raj Parakh, who have known each other for the last eight years, always wanted to create an app that their mothers could use for savings.
“The overall gap in the fintech inclusion for homemakers is very evident and just within the first few months in the journey, we realised that what worked for the entire market in fintech won’t work for this audience,” Veer Mishra tells YourStory.
Raj says the turning point for the startup came after they saw the results of a survey of over 3,000 Indian homemakers conducted between Feb 2022 and May 2022. “We observed the data that presented the case where more than 62% of homemakers had some sort of savings goal for gold/jewellery and they consider this is the most trusted asset class for investment,” he adds.
Homemakers, the co-founder says, save for their families.
Women participate in jewellery purchase plans with their trusted jewellers. “In just last year, around Rs 35,000 crore was mobilised in such a plan of purchase in India which presented us an opportunity to digitise this entire market,” Raj adds.
This led to the birth of their startup in May last year.
Team Plus (L:R) – Aashi Mirani, Raj Parakh, Veer Mishra, Puneet Malvya
Plus, according to its founders, is India’s first jewellery savings app where users can discover trusted jewellers and start planning for their next jewellery purchases directly with the jewellers they can trust.
“As a solution, we have the first mover advantage as we digitise these purchase plans via our app. Users have easy access to discover, compare and plan their jewellery purchase in a single app without having to visit multiple jewellery stores,” Raj says.
“As millions of Indians plan their savings in the form of gold jewellery, Plus wants to ensure they get the best rewards for planning and saving. Interestingly, this is a huge behaviour in the jewellery industry and Plus is built to improve the experience associated with this behaviour,” adds Raj.
Launched two weeks ago, Plus’ app is currently in the beta stage and garnered 1,000 downloads within its first week. So far, the app has 2,500 downloads across Android and iOS.
Plus has onboarded Fiona Diamonds (an 18-year-old jewellery brand) and running pilots with this brand.
The startup is also in talks with a few large traditional jewellers as well as daily wear jewellery makers who will go live on the platform in the next two months.
“So we are expecting to end this pilot with Fiona and the beta mode in February. And post that we will go public with some of these other partner brands,” says Raj.
Speaking about its business model, Plus is free for users and the company charges commissions to jeweller partners on every successful redemption.
The way ahead
Earlier this month, Plus raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by JITO Angel Network, with participation from Venture Catalyst, WeFounder Circle, and other high net-worth individuals.
Plus will use the new funding for product development and hiring new talent.
“With an organisation like JITO Angel, backing us there is a lot of credibility which is built for the company. We are also working on building our initial team. There will also be a lot of content, which is expected to now go live on the app, so that we can basically have more screen time of our users on the app,” Raj says.
The startup aims to achieve GMV/GTV (gross merchandise value/ gross transaction value) of Rs 100 crore over 8-12 months.
“It is a one-of-its-kind idea that is bound to find resonance with Indians who traditionally park their excess funds in jewellery items,” says Pooja Mehta, Chief Investment Officer, JITO Angel Network.
