Jar — Investing Spare Change into Gold by Alexander Gornyi

The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.

It’s been a while since Acorns, one of the startups of the day from the days of yore, came up with a mechanic for slow heating of its audience for financial services – rounding up the change. The person pays $3.96 at a store with a card, the startup automatically charges the additional 4 cents and uses it to buy a little bit of an index fund. Each transaction is painless, nobody feels sorry about a penny, and after a year, the client accumulates a notable amount. A mere nobody becomes an investor.

The idea was put to use by many, even Tinkoff copypasted the mechanics to the letter. Meanwhile, Jar from India used it for its master class on localizing foreign concepts the right way. Its product is absolutely identical to its American prototype. The user launches the app, adds their banking account, and adjusts the amount of round-offs. 5 or 50 rupees go to the investor’s piggybank every evening.

Jar’s only innovation is that instead of investment funds, it buys real gold for its clients. A newbie investor from India has no clue about all those ETFs of yours, but precious metal is an investment that’s understandable and approved by ages. So now one can literally buy it with spare change.

The actual gold is somewhere in guarded warehouses. Jar promises that one can withdraw it at any moment. Probably, the terms do include some fineprint saying that once cannot withdraw a quarter of a gram – but it’s not to be found at a glance.

The startup boasts about having 4 million clients already – that’s a lot even by Indian measures. Recently it brought in a round of USD 32M.

https://www.myjar.app/

#india #rounda #fintech #investments

Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov