Views from Mr. Dilip Modi – Founder, Spice Money:

 “It is heartening to see that, according to the recently launched Financial Inclusion Index by the RBI, the financial inclusion in India has increased to cross the halfway mark to 53.9 in the financial year ended March 2021, as compared to 43.4 for the year ended March 2017. We, at Spice Money, are happy to be a part of India’s financial inclusion journey and aim to work towards reaching the population that is still financially excluded. 

Spice Money has been encouraging more rural entrepreneurs to join the platform as Spice Money Adhikaris or banking correspondents with our zero-entry fee onboarding process that lowers the barrier of entry. Spice Money had been able to grow the network exponentially by almost 130% between FY19-20 and FY20-21. The number of Adhikaris working with Spice Money today stands at more than 7 lakh. 

These Adhikaris are making essential banking services accessible through AePS and providing an assisted model to further financial inclusion in India. AePS is being extensively used to withdraw cash and pay for goods in rural India. Enabling cash deposit through AePS will significantly increase the number operating bank accounts, making it a major step towards financial inclusion. Besides making this amount productive, it will also build banking transactions history that will lead to the collection of valuable data for extending credit. In FY20-21, Spice Money saw a growth of almost 124% in GTV of AePS transactions. 

Spice Money has also deployed 1 lakh micro-ATMs across India. An infrastructure of this magnitude will develop confidence among the rural citizens in banking infrastructure.

Spice Money’s network is present in 95% rural pincodes with a market share of over 17%, and we intend to keep expanding rapidly to accelerate financial inclusion and financially empower Bharat.”