Spare8: unique micro-investment platform

Arise, Awake and stop until the Goal is reached; that’s what Spare8’s co-founders believe.

Spare8 was founded by Ronit Harisingani (CEO & Co-Founder) and Shardul Saiya (CTO & Co-Founder) in 2021. A micro-investment platform that provides a unique way to save & invest your wealth and earn rewards is what defines Spare8. The app is built for the way we live our lives today. It helps automate one’s investments and form a daily savings habit without intentionally doing anything. Spare8 has been able to gamify the entire process and intentionally started offering gold as its first asset class. This is because it wants to help Indians begin their first step towards investing with an asset class they’re comfortable and resonate with, which is GOLD. It simultaneously rewards you for your regular auto investments and gives users immediate access to the power of gold savings.

Some of the key features of Spare8

• Provide one of the quickest onboarding processes ever, which takes less than 30 seconds for the user to complete. No need to share or scan any documents, bank details etc.
• It offer Digital gold backed by 100% physical gold, for which every quantity of digital gold one purchase, an equivalent amount of physical gold, is held in a secured vault.
• Spare8 aware that paying large fees can reduce the returns on one’s investments. Hence we provide no fees and make it free of cost for users to start their Investment journey. This makes Spare8 an affordable choice for those who wish to purchase gold consistently & create wealth.
• Spare8 allows customers to exchange digital gold for physical gold at any time or anywhere. This entails that one can turn your digital gold holdings into actual gold that will be delivered right at one’s doorstep. It gives users the flexibility to choose how they wish to hold their investments.

Why the name ‘spare8’; what does it mean?

The idea of creating a micro-investing platform and focusing on the motive being ‘spending is the new investing’ was always a key focus. While thinking of a particular brand name, a few ideas that came to our mind keeping round-ups in focus, was the word Spare. The name ‘Spare it’ was already used, so the next best alternative was thinking of a number; In this case ‘, 8’ ended up rhyming with “it”, it all made sense.

Eventually, it added up when we created a logo consisting of two old 10-cent coins (Octagonal shape) stacked up on each other – This formed an 8, too, and met with our brand language and theme.

How is spare8 different from government-aided investments?

Government-aided investments usually consist of Public Provident Funds, Sovereign Gold Bonds, National Saving Schemes etc. In this case, the above investments being extremely safe, usually have a long lock-in period; for instance, the National Saving Scheme has a Lock in of 5 years with a minimum investment amount of Rs 1000 and gives an interest of 6.8%.

Whereas for an asset class like Digital Gold, one can start with as little as Re.1. It is also extremely liquid with a zero lock-in period. To add it up, Digital Gold is the underlying of Physical Gold, and on average, one can earn close to 9% per annum.

The platform has already recorded 30,000 downloads in tier II cities like Jaipur, Indore, Patna and Lucknow.

How is Spare8 dealing with gold and its security when one invests? 

When one invests through Spare8, the accumulated Digital Gold is securely stored in Sequel Vaults, monitored by an independent trustee. Further, the physical Goldstored in the vault is also covered by insurance. Users can monitor their activities on the app by viewing all transactional details and downloading invoices for the same. In India, very few companies offer digital gold; one of the few with big plans is Augmont.

Give us insight into the current market scenario and how the micro-investment industry in gold will take shape in the Future.

For decades, banks and fund houses have been trying to tap the Indian masses with their products. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars they have sunk in to win the market, they have been able to count fewer than 30 million individuals.

Spending via digital methods in India has increased drastically via UPI. On the contrary, less than 3% of the country has any formal method of investing. The only way to bridge the gap is to make investing an unintentional habit and merge it with spending.

Spare8’s market scenario is that more people are becoming interested in investing in gold due to global economic uncertainty and inflation concerns. They believe that the demand for gold as a safe-haven asset will continue to grow in the future.

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