App encourages people to save by setting their own rules

App encourages people to save by setting their own rules

He was in India to attend a wedding along with a vacation with his older brother Varun.

But Mr Vidur Malik found that he had not saved up enough money for his leisure activities.

It was then that he remembered the scenes from American TV sitcom New Girl.

Every time actor Max Greenfield's character Schmidt says or does something ridiculous to his friends, they make him put money in a jar and every time the jar is filled, they use it to treat themselves to a night out.

"Imagine if we could set our own rules and use it to save money as efficiently?," said Mr Vidur to his over breakfast in their home in Chandigarh last year.

The brothers were meeting up after a while.

Mr Vidur, 25 had just left his job as an engineer in the US, while Mr Varun, 31, took time off from work as an investment banker with Standard Chartered in Singapore.

Mr Vidur realised he had little savings and felt that he needed a tool to help him manage his finances.

He tried various saving apps but felt that they were not targeted enough, as "these apps are a one-size-fits-all".

He also tried to use an excel spreadsheet to keep track of his expenditure, budget and savings "but it never worked for me".

He then found out that it was a common problem when he spoke to his friends about his difficulties in saving money.

"There seemed to be a perception among people that saving can be a drag so I started thinking of ways to make it fun.

I also wanted to integrate the concept of saving into lifestyle habits so people will find it easier and less of a chore to save," said Mr Vidur, who bounced off ideas with Mr Varun and a childhood friend Ajai Thandi, who was facing the same problem.

With that, the brothers started financial technology platform Hektor in Singapore in May this year.

"On the user's side, it is a free smartphone app that encourages people to save in a fun and simple way by setting their own habit or lifestyle rules," said Mr Vidur who pitched the idea with Mr Varun to Startupbootcamp - a start-up accelerator that supports and scales companies innovating and disrupting the financial sector.

They received a $25,000 grant, an office space and mentorship from the programme.

Mr Vidur, an Indian national, explained that the platform tracks a user's activities by integrating with other mobile applications such as ride-hailing services, e-commerce platforms and even fitness trackers.

Users can set rules on how they want to be rewarded and how much they want to save. For example, a user can set a goal of saving $10 daily when he runs 3km every day.

When he meets his goal, the money will be transferred from his debit account to his Hektor savings account.

Users can access their money in the Hektor account any time.

The start-up has partnered with health and fitness app Apple HealthKit to track users' exercise pattern.

Mr Vidur, himself, has saved $2,000 in six months by using the app.

"The rules are completely customisable. I used to take too many Ubers so I set a rule that said 'if I take more than 10 ubers in a week, save $10 for me'.

"All I have to do is allow Hektor to access information from Uber and the app will understand your spending patterns," said Mr Vidur, who has a masters in computer science from Brown University.

He also set a manual rule to save $50 weekly if he sleeps before 12.30am everyday.

The app, which is in beta mode and is only available on iOS currently, has 500 users on it.

Hektor will officially be launched in November.

The start-up will also launch a Hektor debit card by the end of the year.

"We're working with a partner to produce it.

It is a Visa card and users can use it at any merchant.

The app has algorithms that will study users' behaviour, spending and saving patterns to recommend smart saving goals.

It will facilitate saving by analysing a user's spending patterns," said Mr Vidur, adding that the ultimate aim is to help people manage their finances in a better way.

In addition, Hektor can alert the user if he or she is spending too much on a particular merchant or category of merchants such as shopping or food and beverage.

The company will earn its revenue via a transaction fee from Visa whenever someone uses the card to make a purchase.

While Mr Vidur is involved in the start-up full-time, Mr Varun, who has a master's of business administration from Cambridge University, works part-time juggling his job at Standard Chartered.

The duo also roped in one of the mentors from the Startupbootcamp Mr Rakesh Bhatia to be a co-founder.

While Mr Vidur feels that it has been a good learning experience starting out as a young co-founder of a start-up, he said the journey has been fraught with challenges.

"There are a lot of regulations in the financial technology industry that we have to comply with.

It's nothing new but we have to be very aware of these regulations as we start a company in this space," said Mr Vidur, adding that the company may see challenges in scaling because of the "heavily regulated industry".


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