Ibibo founder Ashish Kashyap dons the entrepreneur’s hat again

Ibibo founder Ashish Kashyap on Monday announced his new venture after selling off his travel booking portal Ibibo to MakeMyTrip in an all-stock deal in 2016 for $1.8 billion.

Kashyap’s new venture INDwealth.in is a full-stack wealth technology platform that will help users manage their investments, liabilities, future cash flows, and taxation—all in one place. It will be operational in January next year.

INDwealth.in has already secured $30 million (Rs 220 crore) from Hong Kong-based hedge fund Steadview Capital. It will be headquartered in Gurugram under the parent entity Finzoom Investments.

Kashyap’s urge to disrupt the wealth management space is a product of his first-hand experience of lack of “transparency” in the wealth management space. He wants to revolutionise the wealth technology space with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

“I have been mis-sold investment products numerous times only to realise much later the huge compounding expenses (and inefficient) being incurred by me,” Kashyap, founder and chief executive of INDwealth told Fortune India.

“The biggest problem that I have faced in the current wealth management industry is lack of transparency, and also absence of use of sophisticated technology. A lot of work in the current industry is still done on XLs (Microsoft Excel) with shallow reporting,” Kashyap added.

INDwealth will have a dedicated team of certified finance counsellors who will provide personalised recommendations on investment products to the users across asset classes and loans. It will provide users with information, including costs, performance (historical and future projection), intersection with tax so as to get a view of post-tax returns, and tax harvesting strategies.

“Our AI engine will help them create their future goals, which will further recommend actions to the users so as to meet the individual’s future cash flow targets,” Kashyap said.

Kashyap sees management wealth as an under-penetrated sector—pegs it at around 10% in India.

The first country head of Google India, Kashyap is not new to disrupting businesses with the use of technology. He had co-founded PayU-India (ibibo Pay), a payment service provider in 2011, which was later consolidated by Naspers into a global entity in 2014.

Despite being a late entrant in the already crowded travel booking space, Kashyap had steered Ibibo to number two in terms of market share, before selling it off to the market leader MakeMyTrip.

Steadview Capital, the hedge fund with investments in some of the largest start-ups in India, including Ola, Policybazaar, Flipkart (exited), among others, sees immense leg room in the wealth management space. “The scope of wealth management is no more restricted to the top of the pyramid.

We see a massive opportunity for technology to democratise wealth management in India across income levels,” says Ravi Mehta, founder and chief information officer at Steadview.