Rural poverty has long been a pressing global challenge. HKUST BBA undergraduate, Naman Tekriwal, along with his Fintech start-up co-founders, further found from a research that only one percent of the Indian village population invested in financial instruments and a mere 0.23 percentage of the same, with the knowledge of systematic investment plans and mutual funds. In view of this, Naman and his team co-founded Rural Invest in April 2020, with the aim of providing a digital wealth management solution that enables people residing in rural regions to invest in mutual funds through SIPs, thus increasing their future savings, economic awareness and financial independence for the improvement of their livelihood in the long run.

To differentiate themselves from the competitors, they allow the mobile application users to spend in direct plans without any third-party agents, cutting down the commission costs that are common in other wealth management options.

With the supervisory support of Tarakki, an investment advisor registered under the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Rural Invest will execute a pilot project over five villages in the state of Haryana and expects to launch their app across the nation. 

For more information about them, please visit their website.