Following competitor Paytm’s move into wealth management, MobiKwik acquired Clearfunds, an online mutual funds advisory platform, to widen the scope of financial services offered on its portal. Upasana Taku, co-founder and director, MobiKwik, talks about why Clearfunds fits the bill and the role of digital payment companies in improving financial inclusion.
What made you believe that Clearfunds was the right fit for Mobikwik’s first-ever acquisition?
At this stage, we are trying to build a full stacked financial services platform. Moving in this direction, lending is something we launched in the first half of this year and we recently announced digital gold and insurance too. Wealth management was the one thing missing and we are looking at being a company that has significant inroads into this and Clearfunds checked a lot of boxes. Currently, there are about 38 asset management and MF companies in India and Clearfunds is the only company that is directly integrated with all of them via direct UPI and this was a big win. Various other platforms that offer the same services are integrated only with 8-10 AMCs. Also, the products and the platform Clearfunds has built in terms of tech such as AI-based robo advisory to understand user needs is great. The company is just two years old but it already has $45 million worth AUM