Great Companies: How did the idea of Fidypay came into being?
Manan Dixit: FidyPay is connecting Bharat (Rural & Semi Urban Population) with India (Digital Economy) through its offline and online kisok model for various financial and banking service solutions. It is Co-Founded by Manan Dixit & Ariff Manji. Manan is Tech Junkie who has worked in IT companies like Tech Mahindra & Amdocs for 4 years. With working in IT Industry, he understood the power of technology and the gaps it can fill in the Financial Literacy in India. Ariff is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded ventures into Print Media, Outdoor Media, Radio Stations, Bakeries, etc. He comes from business background family and has been the visionary in the journey of FidyPay. Manan comes from small town of M.P. and saw that people in this type of regions are still lacking the access to Digital Economy be it e-commerce transactions, Payments, Financial Services, Insurance or Store Digitization. These people don’t get the access and exposure of such services. All they see is an Ad on the TV about the service but when it comes to accessing them from their home is a difficult journey. Hence, I (Manan) discussed this problem prevailing in rural India with Ariff and embarked on narrowing this gap by building digital products & providing access to such services at low/no cost solutions.
Great Companies: Why did you pick Rural over Urban, unlike most of your competitors?
Manan Dixit: India has a vast unbanked population, most of whom stay in the rural areas. Currently, the estimated unbanked population of India is 40%. Most of these areas are so remote that the banking system cannot reach there. Therefore, they do not have the access towards digital payments and financial services neither offline nor online. Banks, wallets, and fintech companies have major focus upto Tier 2 & 3 cities. In rural or tier 4 cities their penetration is nil or low and operational viability is difficult for them. We are reaching this unbanked segment through our assisted model network which are enabling this segment to make digital transactions like bill payments, remittance facilities, micro finance, online store, digital banking, micro insurance, mobile wallet, value added services (VAS) like recharges, ticket bookings, etc. through our platform FidyPay.
Great Companies: How do you plan to connect Bharat to India? How is it going so far?
Manan Dixit: There is lack of basic infrastructure like power, network in rural areas, keeping this in mind we have brought in India’s First Solar Powered Manned Kiosk which can be installed in rural areas to provide financial inclusion services. We have installed more than 20 such kiosks in M.P. that is providing various kinds of financial services to people who are not familiar with technology and Banking operations. Secondly, we are narrowing the gap of Micro Digital Payment space by providing single platform for the Merchants to accept payments, digitalize their operations & provide VAS services using Bharat QR Code. Our strength lies in offline play through offerings such as point-of-sale terminals, Aadhaar based banking, micro ATMs that allow users to carry out banking transactions.
Great Companies: With a cashless Rural India, what will the future of India look like by the eyes of Fidypay?
Manan Dixit: With the push from Government for Rural India we at FidyPay has a vision to create Digital Bharat and Democratizing Digital Inclusion in the country. We see in coming times Rural India is going to be the epicenter of all the future growth that India would see. By making sure Rural India is Digital and less Cash dependent the economy of the country will be taking a steep jump and every citizen will be benefited from the same.
Great Companies: How do you plan to educate the rural population of India to go Digital?
Manan Dixit: We did a Pilot in a small village near Khandwa (M.P.) named Sihada having population of around 10,000. We learnt that people in this region wish to use digital solutions for transactions but due to lack of literacy and knowledge could not adopt these new technologies. But with our solutions of assisted channel it will be empowered to create awareness of digital platforms and enable people in rural areas to understand and adopt these new technologies. With these advancement and growth we are pretty confident that FidyPay would be the Gateway of choice for Rural India for performing any banking, insurance and micro finance transactions.
Great Companies: What is success mantra of Fidypay?
Manan Dixit: Our focus area has been Rural & Semi Urban region from Day 1 because if the root of the country can be made strong with Technology then the whole nation will grow at a faster pace. Hence our success has always been to go where no on goes and to uplift the people in those region with the aim to Democratize Digtial Inclusion. We have been able to acheive some amazing results with Skill Development Deparments where in we are creating Rural Entrepreneurs across the nation to make them sustainable and financially strong in their own Home Town by on boarding them on FidyPay Assisted Network. By being associated with us the Rural Entrepreneur is able to deliver services to his people which he has always thought of doing it someday. These are the people who are contributiing towards making FidyPay a successful Gateway of choice for Rural India.
Great Companies: How did the idea of installing a solar-powered kiosk come to you? How does one operate this ‘one of its own kind’ Kiosk?
Manan Dixit: When we started working on the idea of FidyPay we realised that the terrain where we are going to deloy our services has multiple issues with irregular electricity supply, slow internet connectivity and lack of basic infrastructure. Hence we came up with the idea to install Kiosk which are powered by Solar so that FidyHuts (Outlets) gets a uniteruppted electricity supply, better internet connectivity and importantly a Manned Kiosk to help people perform their financial, banking, etc.. tranactions with our guy assisting them. This person then also work on various financial literacy workshop from time to time as guided by our team.