We have a dream!

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., in his speech, called for equality in civil & economic rights, and an end to racism in the United States, defining the path ahead for civil rights movement. The speech is one of the most iconic speeches in the American history as well as world history. Interestingly, the phrase “I have a dream” was not even written in the original speech text.

Toward the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme "I have a dream", prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!". This part of the speech, which most excited the listeners has now become historic.

The dream Mr. King was talking about, has been the dream of Independent India since 15th August, 1947. In his famous “Tryst with Destiny” speech, Jawaharlal Nehru says,

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we might fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.

On 15th August, 2022, when we will celebrate the 75th Year of Independent India (आज़ादी का अमृत महोस्तव), can we say we have achieved the dream?

Sadly, not yet!

The state of inequality in India

Inequality - the word we use so often in conversations but not given substantial thought on how much does it exist? Quantifying it brings the horror in it and may also open our eyes to course-correct quickly before it's too late.

The report titled “The state of inequality in India”, attempts to give comprehensive overview on the topic through indicators like income profile, labour market dynamics, health, education & household amenities.

🤜 The difference in income distribution resulted in top 1 per cent earning more than thrice as much as the bottom 10 per cent.

🤜 The growth rate of the bottom 50 per cent has been at 3.9 per cent from 2017-18 to 2019-20, while the top 10 per cent has grown by 8.1 per cent.

🤜 A monthly salary of Rs 25,000 is already amongst the top 10 per cent of total incomes earned, pointing towards some levels of income disparity.

🤜 The average monthly salary of regular wage earners in July- September 2019 amounted to Rs 13,912 for rural males and Rs 19,194 for urban males.

🤜 While, employed females in rural parts earned Rs 12,090 in the same period and females in urban areas earned an average Rs 15,031.

🤜 In the urban region, the average salaries for July-September 2019 period came to be Rs 17,166 for males, and females earned an average of Rs 7,141.

🤜 A 44.4 per cent wealth concentration in the highest quintile in urban areas is contrasted with a meagre 7.1 per cent concentration in the highest quintile in rural India.

🤜 Notably, more than 50 per cent of the households fall in the bottom two quintiles of wealth concentration (approx. 54.9 per cent).

We at Spring Money, strongly believe that

“Potential is distributed equally but opportunities are not!”

The idea of equality in opportunities enables every human being with required tools and knowledge to achieve more. It provides the absolutely necessary means to survive and thrive, equally to all. It does not discriminate against gender, cast, religion, language, location or even financial status.

Spring Money is an effort to create a more equal opportunity society, for all.

The way we have chosen to contribute towards the dream of equal opportunity society, is through democratising new age financial products for the ones who need it the most.

So, what's Spring money all about?

In the last 3 years, India has been on accelerated push towards digital economy. We saw extensive penetration of smartphones, revolution of affordable internet and phenomenal growth in UPI, resulting high trust on smartphones for financial transactions.

In the same wave, we also saw rise of fintechs enabling new age products in verticals like credit, insurance and investments which are distributed on the smartphones.

But the reach of these products is limited to top 2-3% of urban populace who are already aware and savvy in terms of usage of various digital avenues.

What about the next 200 million who are middle class citizens, live in urban and semi-urban cities, have a smartphone, earn between 15,000 to 50,000 rupees a month, probably work in a MSME as engineers or operations managers, and are looking to fulfil their dream of - a house with a car parked outside, a good education for their children, good quality of food and health and a financial safety for future.

India, by 2025, is expected to have 200 million households in middle class ( between aspirers and next billion ), in comparison with strugglers reducing to 55 million and the rich (elite & affluent) to be 49 million.

We believe, that the first step in this journey is to make everyone aware about the opportunities. The awareness starts with trust and trust starts with truth.

We observed that unless people are aware about finance and various aspects of finance, they will be easily tricked or influenced to make the buying choices not so good for them but good for the sellers. There is a lot of information on social media, blogs, youtube and much more, but the gap still exists.

1. fragmentation of information creating inconvenience & low or no action

2. Influencers are sellers, rather than educators. So authenticity is questionable.

3. Structure & personalisation is missing to transform information into knowledge.

At Spring money, we want to democratise financial literacy for everyone.

Digital, Structured and Personalised

What do we offer at Spring money?

All at one place

Spring covers comprehensive range topics from credit to insurance to wealth, in multiple formats (audio, video, text), with intuitive delivery methodologies (shorts, podcasts, carousals, daily nudges, long articles) and supporting vernacular languages, all at one place.

Simple and authentic

We are creating the sachet-size content with finance professionals, focused on correctness and simplifying the concepts.

Structured and well-rounded

We personalise your experience with in-course surveys, streamlined engaging content and according to your own financial needs at specific times & stages in life.

We have begun our journey towards the dream of equal opportunity for all and we will do whatever in our capacity possible to keep moving towards it.

We know its not easy but we also know that together we can!

What can you do?

Follow Spring Money on social media

We are on Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram, where we do post interesting and intuitive content on financial literacy. You can check us out and follow for regular updates.

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