Seasoned Investor Kunal Shah-backed Financial Advisory platform BankSathi has added Telugu, Bengali, and Marathi to its platform to support and encourage awareness for locals to bolster the growth in the lesser-known financial domain. This move will benefit 30 lakh customers and 5 lakh advisors in Pan India.
To break the language barrier in financial inclusion as it’s becoming multilingual, BankSathi customers from Tier-2 and beyond can have the comfort of speaking with someone in their own language and understanding fintech products, which may otherwise appear confusing and intimidating. They can now use Telugu, Bengali, and Marathi for accessing accounts, product information, services, and many other things through the BankSathi apps.
In a country as diverse as India, language is one of the most prominent barriers to financial independence. Among a total of 1.4 billion Indians, fewer than half qualify as active internet users, and of those, approximately 500+ million are Indian language users. Interestingly, 70 per cent of these users report difficulty with English, and 60 per cent attribute language issues to their inability to adopt online services. This isn’t just about a language barrier. Using financial services also involves jargon and navigating confusing terms and clauses. In order to gain their trust, native language-speaking customers can grasp these complexities with ease. When handling money, trust is key, and trust is generated by familiarity, comfort, and confidence.
Commenting on the latest development, Jitendra Dhaka, Founder & CEO BankSathi said, “India’s soaring ambition rests in its hinterlands. And it is our dear vision to create a truly democratic offering, one that can be accessed by the majority of the Indian population. To the same end, we have gladly added 3 languages to our platform and will continue to introduce new languages with time. By introducing vernacular languages on the platform, we will eliminate language barriers. This is a natural step in our journey to become the one-stop financial advisory platform for the next billion users of India. Within the next fiscal two more local languages will be added to the application in a future version. Our goal is for every Indian to be financially empowered, to have a professional financial advisor, and to take proactive steps towards saving and building wealth.”
Since BankSathi introduced Hindi as a language option last year, it has recorded a 25 per cent adoption rate. Most BankSathi advisors and customers come from tier-two cities like Jaipur, Chandigarh, and Lucknow, as well as non-Hindi-speaking states like Visakhapatnam, Kochi, and Mysore. A key driver of BankSathi is the vision of having one adviser for every 100 families and has trained over 800,000+ financial advisors. Furthermore, BankSathi aims to support 10 million people in starting small businesses.
