Loyalty program for low-income customers raises money from Blume Ventures

Photo credit: Thomas Belcik.

mPaani, a startup that provides loyalty points to customers, today announced a pre-series A round of funding from Blume Ventures and a long list of angel investors including Aprameya Radhakrishna, the co-founder of TaxiForSure.

It considers itself an “impact business,” which means that its goals are both to make profits as well as foster social good.

mPaani does this by rewarding customers when they complete common transactions, like buying things at local kirana stores (small businesses) or recharging their phones. Points can then be used to buy impactful products like water filters, or to pay for school.

The idea came to Akanksha Hazari when she was working on improving agricultural practices across India. During her fieldwork, she began to see how deeply mobile phones had changed people’s lives. “Cellphones have gotten everywhere from Arunachal to Karnataka,” she says. “It was a mobile revolution, and I saw it firsthand.”

That’s not the only thing that had far-reaching impact, though. The country’s FMCG (fast moving consumer goods, or the things that you can buy in stores that get consumed fast, like snacks or toothbrushes) industry had also found its way into nearly every nook and cranny of the country.

“Even the lowest-paying consumer in the furthest part of the country had access to these products,” Akanksha reminisces. Figuring out the intersection of these two things is how mPaani was born.

More than just buying

Akanksha Hazari, founder of mPaani.

The impact of mPaani reaches far beyond that of just getting people to buy things. Akanksha has a few long-term visions for the startup, including getting India off of cash.

“This is a good way to incentivize people to go cashless,” she says. “Paying in cash means you won’t have an online presence. For the first time, we’re helping people create their own digital footprint, and showing them how important it is.”

“In the future, we’d like to use this data to build out even more products and services,” she adds. “Once people have data online, you can help them in so many ways.”

As of now, mPaani only works in Mumbai, but that’s no small feat. “We have tens of thousands of customers and hundreds of retailers on the merchant side,” Akanksha says. mPaani can be accessed through its website, its app, or even via SMS.

The latest round will be used to move into India’s smaller cities.

Challenges