Former Paytm senior vp Shankar Nath has became entrepreneur after a two-year-long sabbatical. Nath has co-based Junio with every other Paytm alumnus Ankit Gera. This will be the 2d entrepreneurial gig for Nath and the maiden one for Gera.
Junio is a youngsters-targeted clever card that permits them to make virtual and bodily purchases. It’s just like Y-Combinator-subsidized FamPay. Junio acts as a credit score card and imparts monetary field to children, consistent with its website.
It permits mother and father to manipulate clever playing cards thru the app in which they could create in-app chore lists and tie them with perks. Junio additionally permits immediately fund transfer, notifications and versatility to cancel the cardboard at any second thru the app.
The app is but to be released and consistent with Entrackr sources, it’s going to cross stay in some weeks from now.
Nath and Gera have joined the listing of numerous former Paytm executives together with Amit Bagaria, Saurabh Vashishtha, Amit Lakhotia, Deepak Abbot, Nitin Misra and Amit Sinha who’ve donned entrepreneurial hats. Bagaria and Vashishtha run social trade platform SimSim even as Lakhotia released parking app Park+.
Abbot and Misra run fintech app indiagold. Importantly, a majority of these executives had made a giant fortune at Paytm thru ESOPs. Sources emphasized that Nath and Gera don’t have any plans to elevate finances withinside the instant future.
Entrackr has reached out to Gera to advantage greater perception approximately Junio, however he’s but to respond. We will replace the tale in case Gera responds.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Nath served Paytm as a prime advertising officer or CMO for approximately 5 years (Dec 2013 to Nov 2018). After transferring from Paytm, he changed into on sabbatical for 2 years. Gera spent over 4 and a 1/2 of years on the SoftBank-subsidized corporation.
While the youngsters-targeted fintech area is in a completely nascent degree in India, Junio might compete with Sequoia-subsidized FamPay. Launched in early 2019, the Bengaluru-primarily based totally corporation had raised $4.7 million in a seed investment spherical from Y-Combinator, Sequoia India, and Global Founders Capital.
Kids-targeted fintech and neo-banks are a brand new idea in India, however they were evangelised with the aid of using numerous startups withinside the US and the West. Atlanta-primarily based totally Greenlight is one of the early entrants withinside the area withinside the US. It began out youngsters-targeted clever playing cards in 2017 and lately become a unicorn with $250 million infusions from TTV Capital, Canapi Ventures, DST and others.
Step and Paris-primarily based totally PIXPAY have additionally been constructing youngsters targeted banking solutions. In June 2020, Step raised a $22 million spherical from Stripe even as PIXPAY nabbed eight million Euro in March this year.
