Over the past few years, our team collectively observed various instances about the
lack of financial planning in rural Indian households, and these observations acted
like triggers to catalyze our interest in ‘finance‘ and its power to empower. Two
years ago, some of the members of our team had recognized the problem of the
pertinent lack of financial literacy in the youth of India. Back then, they had
launched an initiative called High School Investors to increase financial literacy
and to enable high school students with useful tools and practices for financing
their higher education.

But, as keen observers and volunteers of High School Investors, our co-founders
realized that the same solution could be used to empower the underprivileged
people, and we realized that the rural population of India faces a much more
significant problem of financial planning. We started conducting in-depth research
into this problem by reading up on surveys, blogs, reports & news articles. We
concluded that the rural population of India suffers from a lack of financial literacy
and barely has any personal financial knowledge. They even lack access to
essential financial services and have almost no credit availability. It was then when

we embarked on the journey to find an effective solution to this critical issue, from
which India is currently suffering.

It was shocking to know that only about 1% of the rural people in India invest in
financial instruments, and only 0.23% is aware of SIPs and Mutual Funds. This
statistic is what was the “lightbulb” moment, and this is how Rural Invest was
born. We initially started to target maids & drivers working in our neighborhood
and started educating them & facilitating their investments into Mutual funds.
Initially, they found it hard to believe that by merely saving small amounts like Rs.
500-700 per month through micro-SIPs (Systematic Investment Plans), they will be
able to ensure financial stability for their families.

Now, Rural Invest is ready for nation-wide impact creation through its ease-to-use
& intuitive mobile application, which processes E-KYCs in under 5 minutes &
allows people to invest in Micro-SIPs. We aim to provide financial awareness to
the rural population of India and help them access liquidity in times of distress,
making them financially independent & potentially i