Back to the future (BTTF), is one of those classic science fictions you could watch many times over. Released in the mid-1980s, it got a lot of predictions about 2015 right – video chats, drones, fingerprint scanners and ubiquitous flat screens. But, in this futuristic world there is a jarring relic of the past - phone booths. Imagine the dissonance! Phone booths in the backdrop of flying cars.

This dissonance gets me every time. BTTF was an attempt at predicting the future; but, when such contradictions happen in contemporary times, they point to clear opportunities. We see such a dissonance (and hence, opportunity) with teenagers in India today.

Teenagers are one of the earliest adopters of tech in India. They get their families to try e-commerce, buy digital goods in games and book Ubers for their parents. They haven’t seen a world without the internet! However, their payments and banking experience remains stuck a decade back.

Remember payments before UPI and other digital banking solutions? The life of a teenager hasn’t changed much from there. Current payment solutions for teenagers include on-demand cash from parents, supplementary cards (requiring OTPs on each transaction), or using the parent’s phone for a UPI transaction. All of these are sub optimal solutions and offer poor experience to both the parents and teenagers. 250M+ teenagers in India remain largely underserved.

FamPay is re-imaging this experience and building India’s first neo-bank for teenagers. We are thrilled to announce that Elevation is leading the Series A round in FamPay.

FamPay makes it convenient for teenagers to make online and offline payments through the FamPay app and card. FamPay aims to start a journey with their customers while they are young & stay with them throughout their financial journey ahead. This roadmap resonates strongly with us.

The FamPay founders get this TG; well, they are the TG! The team has been very innovative in their thinking right from the beginning. FamPay launched FamCard - India’s first numberless card - thus creating a cleaner and more “Instagrammable'' product. This created a strong buzz for the brand among the teenage audience. More importantly, payments and consequent financial journeys are boring and cumbersome today. We really like that FamPay is looking to solve this from Day 1. FamPay is reimagining banking for teenagers with best-in-class product experience, gamified savings, reward programs and in-app community.

FamPay started with a strong sense of mission. As young students themselves, Sambhav and Kush, were inspired by reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. The book made them realize that there is a severe lack of financial literacy among Indian teenagers today. While there is on-demand financial support for teenagers, there is hardly any financial independence or literacy. This was the vision that made Sambhav and Kush start FamPay.

We first met Sambhav and Kush in May 2019, hardly a month after they decided to start FamPay. Finding Sambhav and Kush impressive, we closely tracked their journey, engaging periodically and sharing our insights on this evolving space and market. Within a few months of their launch, it was clear that the team was building something magical for Indian teenagers.

We at Elevation are very excited about product-first companies that deliver a true delta over incumbents. Sambhav, Kush and their team embody this approach. The FamPay product is built with a deep understanding of the TG and delivers a world-class UX. Post initial launch, FamPay’s customers themselves started creating a hype around the product, organically posting numerous “unboxing” videos. This drew a lot of attention and growth for the company.

FamPay has 2M users within 8 months of launch, witnessing 100%+ month on month growth in transacting users and payment volumes. We decided to talk to many of FamPay’s customers and realized the product has an amazing 72% NPS (net promoter score). Almost all users, we spoke to, said they would be really disappointed if the FamPay product were to be discontinued.

This strong user love forms the basis of our long term excitement in the company. India has over 250M+ teens, the needs of whom remain underserved. There exists an opportunity to build products that are contextualized for their unique needs and behaviours. As with payments, access and experience both remain broken across solutions available to this audience (think other financial services, commerce, social/community etc.). We believe that FamPay is in a unique position to solve this problem across various categories. There exist many such “telephone booths” in a teenager’s world today that FamPay can render archaic.

FamPay is setting the gold-standard in solving for access and experience in payments. The next frontier  will be solving for access across banking, other financial services, and commerce/services categories. In each of these categories, the team’s strong product capabilities and user empathy will allow them to build and deliver 10X better experiences than incumbents. We are excited to be partner with FamPay in their journey to become the destination app for Gen Z, and a gateway for their access to financial products and beyond.