Werize - Associate Director - Banking & NBFC Partnerships Platform

About WeRize:

Founded in 2019 by Vishal Chopra and Himanshu Gupta, WeRize is building India's largest full stack financial services brand for 300 million underserved middle-class customers who live in 4000+ small towns of India. This customer segment is not served by private sector banks, Insurers and Mutual Fund companies due to their low ticket-size and lifetime value and is dependent on PSU/Govt. banks. PSU/Government banks rarely provide financial products beyond basic savings accounts and these customers lack access to unsecured loans, credit cards, health and life insurance and investment products. WeRize manufactures innovative Credit, Savings and Group Insurance products designed for this customer base keeping in mind their needs, requirements and purchasing power, with a view to add a layer of financial security to their lives and enable access to credit.

While customers in these geographies use smartphones, they need proper guidance and support when purchasing the right financial products for themselves. So, a pure digital model doesn't work for this segment. WeRize has innovated on this front through its 'Finance ki online dukaan (Social Shopify of Finance)', a first of its kind social distribution tech platform in the financial services space that educates and enables local financially literate freelancers across these small towns to source business through online and offline channels, recommend the right financial product(s) to customers as well as provide after sales support. These freelancers, who are located in more than 1000+ towns and cities, earn as much as INR 30,000 a month from WeRize in commissions.

Our social distribution platform supported by financially literate freelancers means exceptionally low cost of customer acquisition (CAC) and operations costs compared to both fully digital and on-the-ground financial services providers. Digital conversions among this target group are way lower when compared to upper income customers in metros and hence pure digital CAC doesn't work for this segment. While companies like LIC and Fino Bank also rely on freelancer distribution, they deploy local on-field teams/branches to manage freelancers in every city. That results in very high CAC and operations costs for such companies. WeRize on the other hand, has been able to acquire, train and manage thousands of freelancers in 1000+ cities only through its tech platform and without any feet-on-street team of its own. This results in highly profitable business model for Werize.

Key Metrics:

- Annualized Revenue Run Rate of $11Mn as of June 2022. ( Approx $1Mn per month).We are growing aggressively and our revenues are doubling every 6 months

- Profitability- Unlike most of other startups, we are already profitable because of our unique distribution model.

- Geography Covered- Served customers in 1500+ cities pan india. Aim to cover all 4000 cities in next 3 years.

Fund Raise:

Funds Raised: $26 million (INR 192 Crore)

Valuation - $ 115.5Mn (INR 900 Crore)

Stage: Pre- Series B (raised June 2022)

Investors:

- British International Investment (BII)-UK Government's investment fund (Formally known as CDC group, BII is the British government's investment fund. It's a 10 billion dollar+ impact focused fund that has invested in some of the largest banks and NBFCs of India.

- Sony Innovation Fund, Japan Sony Innovation Fund is the investment arm of Japan's Multi-billion dollar Sony Corporation.

- Kalaari Capital

(One of the largest Indian VC with $850MN AUM and investments such as Myntra, CureFit, Dream11, ElasticRun, Upstox, Simplilearn)

- Picus Capital , Germany

(Fund run by Alexander Samwer- Co-Founder of Rocket Internet that had multiple billion Dollar + exits/IPOs - Lazada (SE-ASIA), Jumia (AFRICA), DeliveryHero(EU) )

- 3one4 Capital

(Early-Stage Fund with $300Mn AUM and companies such as NeoBank Open , Licious & Jupiter Neobank in its portfolio)

- Orios Ventures

(Early-stage fund with companies like Ola, Pharmeasy and GoMechanic in its portfolio)

Leadership Team:

Vishal Chopra, Co-Founder & CEO:

- Ex-CBO Lendingkart - India's largest Fintech Lender ($150Mn+ fund raise)

- Fist hire of Amazon India - part of the leadership team that launched Amazon.in

- Regional Director, Souq.com - largest e-commerce player in the Middle East. Raised $425Mn, acquired by Amazon

- MBA, ISB Hyderabad

Himanshu Gupta, Co-Founder & COO:

- Ex-VP and Head of Data Science, Lendingkart - created AI/ML models and maintained

NPAs < 2% vs 8% industry avg

- Data Scientist, IHS Markit

- BTech, IIT Delhi

- 10+ years' experience in AI/ML

Founding Team:

Head of Collections:

South India Head-Collections, Bajaj Finance; managed 800-member team

Head of Product:

BTech, IIT Kanpur; Product Leader at Lendingkart and Flipkart

Head of Technology:

Btech CS, IIT Kanpur; Tech Leader at Paytm and Medlife

Head of Business:

MBA- IMT Ghaziabad, Operations Leader, Lendingkart

Head of Credit Ops:

Regional Head, HDB (HDFC subsidiary)

Role Description:

- Own and drive end-to-end complex product requirements across multiple teams.

- Mentor and Lead a team of product managers and analysts.

- Create long and short term roadmaps, align stakeholders and ensure the timely and quality delivery.

- Lead the Launch of new partnerships with NBFCs and Banking partners.

- Lead the Launch and maintenance of Loan Management System and enable Business to scale up Lending Operations with multiple NBFCs and Banks.

- Ensure reconciliation and reporting processes are set up between Lenders, Finance and Collections for accurate and timely loan data reporting.

- Build the tech infrastructure for customers and partners for repayments and collections.

- Build, prioritize and execute the roadmap for improving and optimizing the collections efficiencies and cost.

Attributes we are looking for :

- 6+ years experience in Product Management.

- Strong experience in Launching Partnerships with Banks/NBFCs especially in Colending/FLDG frameworks

- Excellent understanding of the LMS and nuances of Financial reporting of the loans.

- Strong interpersonal, communication (spoken and written) and influencing skills.

- Ability to navigate a complex and unstructured cross-functional environment.

- Ability to prioritize in an ambiguous environment.

- Strong analytical mindset and ability to extract and analyze data from SQL based Databases.

- A strong understanding and experience of deep API integration with NBFCs and Banks.

- MBA from a top tier college is a must.