This startup lets you pool in money without losing friends or cash, and it just raised seed funding

Are you the party planner of the group? Every time the group thinks of a trip, do they look to you to organize it impeccably? Planning a fun party or an adventurous trip is definitely fun and exciting, but the one thing you dread is the finances. How do you make sure everyone chips in without losing your dignity, money, or friends? Things can get ugly.

MyPoolin, a Delhi based startup, claims to have the answer to all your money-pooling woes. Its app offers a way to pool money from a group without the hassle of constant and embarrassing follow-ups and reminders.

“MyPoolin stemmed from our earlier B2B product that we had developed for ecommerce websites that allowed users to collect money from their friends on that site for group gift-giving. We later realized that folks pool money all the time for not only gifting but trips together, movies, concerts, and dining. The problem that we want to solve is the uncomfortable ‘you owe me’ situations in a group that permeates all these cases,” says Ankit Singh, co-founder of MyPoolin.

The company recently raised seed funding from a group of prominent angel investors: Sharad Sharma (iSPIRT), Rajan Anandan (MD, Google India), Sunil Kalra, Amit Ranjan (co-founder, Slide Share), Rohan & Arjun Malhotra (Investopad), Jaspreet Bindra (former regional director, Microsoft, and ex-CEO of Askme), Gautam Gandhi (ex-head of New Business Development India, Google), and Steve Sule and Gagan Dugal of Matrix Cellular.

The company was incubated at Gurgaon-based Investopad. “MyPoolin operates in the payments space with an interactive social layer which is India-centric and unique,” says Rohit Taneja, co-founder of Investopad. “We have had the pleasure of working closely with Ankit and Rohit from day one, and have a lot of faith in their approach and capability. We are incredibly excited to be a part of this journey.”

Plan, pool, party, repeat

Every time you plan a party, trip, concert or any such social gathering, you can use this app to invite all your friends or family to form a pool and chip in. They can then discuss, vote, or opt in/out within the app. All the money is held in wallets or escrow with MyPoolin’s payment partners such as PayTM, Mobikwik, and PayU. Creating the pool is free of charge and it can be customized.

In cases where a group member is not comfortable paying his/her share via an online transaction, there is a way out: a cash-on-meeting option. “We see that happen in groups where there is a high frequency of combined group transactions. We allow them to reflect a cash transaction in the pool,” says Singh.

Once everyone in the group has paid their share, you can either spend the collected amount on any of its partner merchants or get it transferred to your bank account.

The startup has partnered with a number for B2B and B2C companies for users to sometimes splurge or for gifting purposes. “For B2B plugins, we have partnered with big e-commerce sites such as Shopclues, YepME, BabyOye, and Jewelsouk. For B2C, we have over 60 partners such as Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong, and MakeMyTrip. We will be tying up with BookMyShow and a few other companies soon,” says Singh.

Web app to mobile app