pinBox, a global PensionTech working towards providing digital micro-pension and social security inclusion, has raised $ 1 million in funding from Venture Catalysts (Vcats), an integrated incubator, along with accelerator fund 9unicorns.
Founded in 2016 by industry veterans Parul Seth Khanna and Gautam Bhardwaj, pinBox uses technology, process innovation, and a simple, intuitive user interface to address friction and access challenges in delivering micro-pension and insurance solutions to underserved informal sector workers.
pinBox has partnered with WhatsApp to make savings as quick, easy, and simple as sending a text message.
Talking about the need for micro-pension products, Gautam Bhardwaj, co-founder of pinBox said that the self-employed women and informal workers without savings and insurance were more vulnerable to risks. Hence it was necessary to create products suitable for this group of population.
“Without comprehensive social protection, we are staring at an old-age poverty crisis that will soon impact everyone globally. By 2050, this problem will become too large and irreversible. We must urgently encourage and enable young, economically active citizens to start saving for a 25-year retirement,” Bharadwaj said.
pinBox has worked extensively with several governments, regulators, financial inclusion stakeholders, and DFIs like World Bank, UNCDF, and UKAID across Asia and Africa on expanding digital micro-pension and social protection coverage to self-employed women and informal sector workers, including gig-workers.
The startup has built the world’s first white-labeled and fully API-enabled micro-pensionTech platform that integrates the digital ID, finance, and payments ecosystem to “switch on” an inclusive social security marketplace. It also provides a ready-to-deploy pensionTech platform to governments and regulators seeking to expand pension and insurance coverage to non-salaried workers.
pinBox has in the past assisted the Government of Rwanda in launching Africa’s first fully digital, government-sponsored micro-pension and insurance scheme, which has nearly 1.5 million subscribers. It has deployed its pensionTech platform in Kenya to deliver an integrated pension and insurance solution to about 17 million non-salaried workers. In India, pinBox is working with HDFC Pension, SBI AMC, and leading insurers to help deliver NPS and customized saving and insurance solutions to India’s 400m informal sector workers without social security benefits.