Why did we invest in Jar?
The Era of Passive Investors
In the past couple of years, Indians have fallen in love with the idea of investing.
To put this staggering development into perspective, the number of demat accounts in April 2022 were almost thrice the count on March 2020. Further, the percentage of companies owned by retail investors went up to 9.7%, from the 8.4% observed a couple of years prior.
All of this indicates that the new India is more financially literate than ever before.
However, while this is a significant step forward, there is still a major barrier that is greatly limiting the benefit that can be extracted from this occurrence — fear of inadequate information.
As a direct consequence of the perception that they don’t possess the requisite information, and/or skill to invest in equity, most Indians turn towards safer options — passive investing. For reference, while 12.7% of China’s population invests in equities, only 3.7% of individuals in India share their enthusiasm.
This fear is so potent, that a lot of people are discouraged from ever getting into the market at all.
For them, there is one viable alternative — passive investing.
Therefore, we understood that the market desperately needed a hassle-free platform specifically catered towards passive investing that could encourage the Indian investor to shed their fears and reservations pertaining to the market.
Digital Gold as a Passive Investment Vehicle
Gold has always held a special place in the Indian households. It’s not just another accessary for ostentation, it’s a cultural statement. For this reason, gold is both highly coveted, and preciously stored.
Because of its distinguished positon, it isn’t hard to imagine why more than 75% of Indian households own gold in some form or another. When all these individual holdings were aggregated, the cumulative value of privately held gold was noted to be over $1.5 trillion.
Gold’s utility isn’t just for cosmetic, or cultural purposes. Buying commoditised gold as an investment is also highly encouraged in India. However, because of its astronomical demand, most people are almost always unable to partake in the same.
The answer to this woe is simple — digital gold.
To put it at lucidly as possible, digital gold is real gold that is stored virtually. Why is it such an attractive proposition though?
1) Accessibility: Accessibility manifests in two manners; ease in purchase, and comfort in accessing the purchased commodity. For the former, people can venture in digital gold for as little as Re 1. This positions digital gold as one of the most viable asset. For the latter, the purchaser can attain physical delivery of their holdings at their doorstep at any time. Therefore, digital gold is considerably more accessible than physical gold.
2) Safety: While physical gold necessitates meticulous care regarding its storage and safety, digital gold eliminates all of that because it is vault-stored. Thus, it is a considerably more convenient asset to own.
3) Purity: People often fret about the quality of gold that they’ve purchased. Digital gold resolves that quite handily. It is 24K pure gold, and its quality is assured by numerous stakeholders who form the industry. Thus, people can buy the asset without inviting undue worry about its purity.
Therefore, digital gold is both an impeccable alternative to physical gold, and, due to a generally stable price, an incredibly lucrative vehicle for passive investment as well.
Highly Capable and Efficient Founders
As discussed herein, the scope of the problem is quite inordinate. Therefore, a highly capable, and inspirational team is a salient necessity. And few companies satiate this requirement better than Jar.
Both Misbah, and Nishchay are conviction driven founders, who approached this problem statement with an uncanny lucidity, and a comprehensive vision that was able to captivate the country.
While their considerable experience in the Indian startup ecosystem, extensive engineering background, phenomenal distribution capability were apparent to us from the first call itself, it has been an absolute revelation to witness their ability to empower their team. With how they approach team building, Misbah and Nishchay are a laudable template for all founders to follow.
It is rather rare to see a founding team grow so much people in such a short span of time. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of their leadership is the sheer humility they exude in spite of their accomplishments.
A Peerless Product
The key problem statement that Jar sought to address was eradicating the fear and apprehension that plagues the average Indian investor. To achieve this, the central idea of their platform had to be simplicity. This is the principle that inspired the iconic UI of the application.
To make the app as user-friendly as possible, and reduce the learning curve new users might be put on, they utilised the inherently India habit of saving change in a piggy bank and jar to form the crux of the product’s philosophy. Thus, Jar became the platform where users can save money by taking spare change from their online transactions and investing in digital gold automatically.
Jar also helps create a habit of daily savings by auto investing small amounts as investments in digital gold. This allows the user to simultaneously save and invest in digital gold without wasting their time and effort.
Further, to ensure greater penetration across the nation, Jar also lays an impressive degree of emphasis on catering to local vernaculars in their product.
Therefore, the comfort that Jar bestows upon their end user is truly unrivalled across the industry. The sheer precision in their emphasis on product design is what has inspired their growth, and customer loyalty.
Blazingly Rapid Ascent
While Jar was one of the complete propositions in the ecosystem, the sheer swiftness with which they’ve been able to expand is quite staggering.
For a 14 month company to attain over 10 million users is unheard of. Moreover, of the 10 million cumulative users, 20% are regularly transacting.
Jar’s aggressive expansion strategy, and intimate connection with their existing customers is what sets them apart from the competition, and grant them a distinguished position in the ecosystem.
It is this proven track record of hyper growth that inspires confidence in Jar’s future, and their ability to actualise their vision.
Conclusion
While the past couple of years have been jubilant for Indian retail investors, there is still a widespread fear prevalent in the market. The fear of insufficient information when it comes to the market. The key to combatting this is promoting a comprehensive platform geared specifically towards passive investments.
Speaking about potential passive investment vehicles, gold has always held a special place in India. However, investing in gold is almost always arduous for an average Indian. It does have an extremely viable alternative — digital gold. Digital gold is the perfect synthesis of physical gold’s desirability, and a traditional stock’s liquidity.
However, establishing a platform that caters to all the needs of a passive investor is a difficult task. It needs founders who can imbue a long term vision in their venture, and that is precisely the hallmark of Misbah and Nishchay. The both of them define the archetype of leadership for new generation founders. Therefore, it didn’t come as a surprise when they build Jar to be as convenient as it is.
Further elaborating on the product, Jar’s attention to detail when building a customer-friendly product is truly apparent. Jar, as a platform, is in clear contention for one of the most well designed products in the market. It reduces the usually laborious task of investing, to one which can be done with magnificent ease.
Finally, all of these factors come together to define the unbelievable growth trajectory witnessed by Jar. Jar has truly gone on to define an entire industry.
We are extremely proud to be a part of team Jar, and can’t wait to see them as the go-to savings app for passive and long-tail investors.
