Any document-based system tends to burden honest people. The criminals simply bypass it, observed Sanjay Bhargava, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Bharosa Club, a paperless (digital) platform for financial services.

This ex-PayPal executive would know, given his vast experience in the financial services industry, and with PayPal’s success in providing paperless solutions. Bhargava describes the one-year-old Bharosa Club as a “universal financial services utility”.

Bharosa is the Hindi word for ‘trust’. As a digital platform, Bharosa enables households to acquire financial products, including mutual funds, insurance policies and low-cost loans.

“Bharosa Club is looking to become an equivalent of an app store on Android or iPhone. Different financial product manufacturers can come on board and offer their products,” Bhargava told BusinessLine .

With a relatively simple business model, Bharosa seeks to serve one in three households in the country.

It has started its journey with mutual funds and will soon start offering low-cost loans, Bhargava said.

“One of my passions is to help eradicate poverty. The battle against poverty can be won if we provide simple financial products and processes. You have to move people away from the informal system. The poor find it difficult to participate in the formal system.

“If you can make it easy, then financial inclusion is possible,” he added.

A Jan Dhan Yojana enthusiast, Bhargava said with Bharosa, the financial services industry can solve the last mile problem, just as the FMCG sector did using kirana stores.

Bharosa’s revenues will come from a ‘shared utility fee’ that will be borne by product manufacturers (such as mutual fund houses), which will also pay a small percentage fee of the assets under management. For purchase of mutual fund, investors are not charged. “We are not earning any commission. We are not biased. We are on a start-up mode and hope to get 5,000 customers soon,” Bhargava said.

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