New-age fintech startup Galgal Money has raised $1 million in seed funding to offer efficient banking solutions in India.
Galgal app aims to solve financial management issues among youth through its AI system. Since young adults often see financial management as complicated, Galgal offers help to simplify the process. It promises to make savings less stressful for them.
According to co-founder Arun Iyer, the startup’s target customers, Gen Z, make up more than a fourth of the Indian population, or about 375 million. These young adults are either students, recent college graduates, first-time employers or hustlers.
Co-founder Harsh Chhatrapati developed the idea for the app during his study in England. He said being a college student made him realize that money management was a prevalent problem among young adults. This productive age group tends to have limited income while dealing with various expenses. It causes young adults to feel frustrated about the gap between their actual and expected savings.
The Galgal app is developed based on the simple psychological concept of habit formation through reward and punishment. Anytime a user spends money, the app will ask whether they feel good or guilty about the spending. Galgal believes that choosing between the two options can influence their spending behavior in the future.
Hyper-personalized
Arun Iyer
Iyer explained that this app provides a “hyper-personalized” and accessible financial management experience for each user. Due to its approach, Iyer argued that the experience would be fun yet educational.
In addition to its budgeting feature, users can use the Galgal card. This Visa prepaid card does not charge annual, maintenance or hidden fees. Users can simply make deposits into their accounts and use the card to pay various expenses.
The seed capital has allowed Galgal to launch its application to cater to 5,000 users who already placed their names on the waitlist during the app’s beta stage. Galgal now aims to invest in further product development using the remaining funds to enhance user experience rapidly. It also plans to offer more features to enhance the digital banking experience for young people in India.
