ScrewCash - Creates a Payment Driven Mobile Marketing Platform; Helps SMBs in Customer Acquisition and Retention
ScrewCash is a mobile app which makes people not use cash & instead go for mobile payments at brick & mortar merchants like – restaurants, retailers etc. Apart from comfort of going cashless, users are incentivized via cashbacks, loyalty programs etc. which are 100% funded by merchants (SMBs – Small & Medium Businesses).
Soumya Gupta from BW Disrupt interacts with Sarabjot Singh, Co-Founder of ScrewCash and talks to him.
Q1. From software engineer to becoming a startup founder, launching ScrewCash, tell us all about your journey.
I did my engineering in Electronics & Communication from Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) in 2010 and worked for Samsung as Software Engineer. Later, I joined ST-Ericsson as System Software Engineer where I made device driver software for our client Nokia. In 2012, I started my MBA in Finance & Marketing from MDI, Gurgaon.
Post which, I joined American Express where I was responsible for managing India Corporate business. As a risk manager, the objective was to identify opportunities to grow the business profitably but at the same time manage credit risk for the market. There I got opportunity to work closely with SMBs & understands challenges they face in managing their finances. During that tenure, I identified an opportunity to create a technology platform, potentially useful for millions of SMBs in India which helps them grow their business. The idea was to create a payments driven mobile marketing platform which helps SMBs in not only acquiring new customers but also retain them by providing better service & engaging them regularly. When I shared this idea with Raksh (co-founder), he also got excited & there in we left out corporate jobs last year to start building ScrewCash.
Q2. What is ScrewCash all about? Tell us about the product offering and its target segment?
ScrewCash is a mobile app which makes people not use cash & instead go for mobile payments at brick & mortar SMBs like – restaurants, chemist, kirana stores etc. Apart from comfort of going cashless, users are incentivized via cashbacks, loyalty programs etc. which are 100% funded by SMBs. All these benefits are seamlessly integrated with the act of payment, so users do not need to search various portals/apps for offers to save money. For making a payment, all possible e-payment options like debit card/credit card/net banking/wallets like FreeCharge, Citrus are available to customers.
We also help users manage shared expenses which means they can-1) Easy split bills 2) keep record of outstanding amount at individual & group level 3) transfer money (only mobile no. required) to others 4) send automatic reminders to people who owe them money.
From SMBs perspective, we are helping them increase revenue by providing platform which helps them in customer acquisition & retention. ScrewCash acts as a ‘payment + marketing’ platform for them without any requirement of extra hardware, not even a smartphone, even basic feature phone is enough. Apart from being able to collect payments via mobile, they can run their own customized offers/loyalty program as per their own business need to acquire, engage & retain their customers.
Since majority of people do not actively search for offers to save money, we are targeting such people only in age group 18-40 so that we could become the default app which they use to make daily payments through mobile. We want to work like a personal money assistant to ensure that money is saved, without them investing any time/effort on same.
Q3. What were the challenges you faced in setting up and scaling your enterprise? Any challenges that you are still facing?
The journey has been truly till now rewarding in terms of learning. Talking about challenges, initially it was difficult to convince merchants to come on board due to 2 reasons:- 1) I had no sales experience 2) Merchants did not had great experience with other apps they worked with. But now with more than 200 merchants on board, it’s no more a major problem for us.
Our business model is highly scalable since:-1) We do not need any collections team to collect payments from merchants & 2) do not need maintenance team since we do not any extra hardware at merchant end. But we are still figuring out as how to make this merchant acquisition process more automated since it will be very difficult with our current approach to move from 200 in one city to 200,000 merchants throughout India.
Q4. Can you tell us about the core team for ScrewCash, their background and rich experience?
ScrewCash core founding team has 2 members – Me (Sarabjot Singh) & Raksh Anand. Raksh is my batch-mate from Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) in 2010. Later, he joined Sapient Consulting as Software Engineer where he worked primarily with banking industry clients (in USA) for more than 5 years and developed their proprietary technology as IT Consultant. His experience of working with banks has been supremely useful in creating the technology for ScrewCash.
Q6. What is the competition in the market for ScrewCash? What is the differentiator that sets it apart from competitors?
The biggest difference between us & our competitor is in our approach in solving the problem. ScrewCash is an easy to use one-solution app which takes care of interconnected multiple use-cases whereas all our competitors are sticking to one particular use case in isolation & trying to solving it. All these use cases (payment of bills, saving money, splitting bills & transferring money among friends) are interconnected & faced by user in everyday life.
Let me explain why we look at it like as one problem & not many –
When will anyone want to transfer money to friend? Most probably, when there is a shared expense which first needs to be split. Ok, now when will you be required to split a bill?
Only when someone else has first paid for it, right?
And when we are going to make a payment, we usually search for options to save some money (cashbacks, discounts etc.) so why not integrate it with the act of payment itself?
Hence, we believe in our different approach of being a one-solution app. Since the market we are trying to crack is so big we feel that many players like us can co-exist & still grow rapidly.
Q6.Can you elaborate about mobile payments as a segment and its attractiveness for startups? Market size? Growth?
Right now, mobile payments is still a niche with huge potential to be adopted by masses. But this year, 2016, will prove to be an inflexion point for mass adoption as per my understanding. There are 3 reasons why I believe that: 1) Social Adoption – Thanks to e-commerce players, in last 5 years more and more people have become comfortable with the ideas of making a payment in cashless mode 2) Technology – Smartphones & better coverage through 4G has made it now technically possible to have good experience while making a mobile payment 3) Economic – With the launch of UPI, the cost of transaction will come down drastically which will make it economically viable for small retailers with thin margins to accept mobile payments.
It is true that mobile payments will bring lot of convenience in everyday life of users & since market for the same is huge, lot of startups like us are attractive towards to it, trying to crack the model with different models & strategies. Ultimately, it’s going to be about right execution & adoption by customers which will decide the future of any startup.
As per various reports, current market size for such mobile payments is more than $ 18 Billion with growth rate of more than 20% y-o-y. Since starting our operations in April this year, transactions through ScrewCash are growing rapidly at 100% month-on-month. We currently have more than 200 merchants on board with us
Q7. What were the challenges you faced in setting up and scaling your enterprise?
The journey has been truly till now rewarding in terms of learning. Talking about challenges, initially it was difficult to convince merchants to come on board due to 2 reasons: 1) I had no sales experience 2) Merchants did not had great experience with other apps they worked with. But now with more than 200 merchants on board, it’s no more a major problem for us.
Our business model is highly scalable since: 1) we do not need any collections team to collect payments from merchants & 2) do not need maintenance team since we do not any extra hardware at merchant end. But we are still figuring out as how to make this merchant acquisition process more automated since it will be very difficult with our current approach to move from 200 in one city to 200,000 merchants throughout India.
Q8. How are you funded for ScrewCash currently? Any early stage/seed funding that you would like to share with us?
We are currently bootstrapped and looking to raise seed round of funding soon. Apart from comfort of going cashless, users are incentivized via cashbacks, loyalty programs etc. which are 100% funded by SMBs. All these benefits are seamlessly integrated with the act of payment, so users do not need to search various portals.
