[Exclusive Interview] Find Out How This Startup Has Empowered 100,000+ Women With Financial Knowledge

Recently we interacted with Hena Mehta: CEO & Co-Founder of BASIS, which is an app-based Financial Services Platform for Women.

They have already empowered 100,000+ women with financial knowledge, and helped them to decode the complex financial world.

Here are the highlights from the interview:

1. Tell us about the company, products, and service that your company offers.

Basis is India’s financial products and services platform designed for women. Basis is re-imagining, re-thinking, and re-engineering how women look at and manage their finances. It boasts a community of more than 1,00,000 women on a mission to learn, discuss and take action for their money. 

Basis was recently featured in the “Made in India” collection on Google Play this past Republic Day. The product boasts simplicity, de-jargoned education and content, India’s only women community focused on money, advisory/planning tools powered by Basis’ own gender-intelligent algorithms – and now, curated financial products for women – starting with The Power Card, India’s first card designed for women.  Basis is designed to turn commercially savvy women currently ignored by financial services, into active, informed customers. 

2. What was the inspiration behind developing the whole idea into a full-fledged company?

Basis was born out of co-founder Hena’s personal pain points with money in her late 20s. After having researched the space of women and money, Hena realised that she wasn’t alone in her challenges with money and teamed up with Dipika, her co-founder who is a financial planning and wealth management expert. Women represent the single largest source of latent demand in finserv, and Basis is targeting a multi-billion dollar market with its hyper-focused financial solutions as it builds a full stack digital bank for urban women.

3. Tell us about gender disparity in terms of financial stability.

Women live longer than men, and thus have to plan for larger retirement corpuses. Furthermore, women’s income patterns are different from those of men as they choose to take career breaks more often, and due to the gender-wage gap (~25-30% in India). If this wasn’t enough, women also face higher healthcare costs and risks and spend more on personal care. However, women represent under a quarter of stock market investors in the country. 80%+ of women do not have health or life insurance, or are underinsured. 90%+ of loans disbursed in India are to men.  

4. How does Basis add value to the target audience? How does it empower women?

Basis is powered by financial education and communities, which fill the knowledge, trust and confidence gaps that women tend to face when it comes to their money. By adopting a community-driven adoption of finserv (learn–>discuss–>transact), Basis is building a unique solution to target millions of women who are looking to invest, get insurance covers, or understand and participate in the credit eco-system.

5. Talk about your latest or upcoming product; what can the audience expect. 

We have just announced The Power Card, India’s first card designed by women – and are currently accepting women on our waitlist. The audience can expect a first-of-its-kind women-focused credit product, with customised reward programs and other features designed keeping women’s pain-points, goals and behaviour patterns in mind. Only 12% of credit cards in India are owned by women, and Basis is changing that with its hyper-focused Power Card product, education and community initiatives around credit.

6. What are your growth plans?

5mm users in the next 3 years.