It's rightly said wealth preservation is as important as wealth creation. It takes great understanding and deep insights to strategically manage the wealth that you've created. And it's not necessary that an individual can do it all on their own. Hence to extend professional wealth management services, Cube Wealth was founded by Satyen Kothari, who had previously founded Citrus Pay, which was acquired by PayU for $130 million in 2016.
The startup was envisioned by the founder with a simple vision i.e.,' Simplifying Wealth Creation for Busy Professionals.' Cube Wealth provides comprehensive portfolio management solutions to help busy professionals achieve their goals through investments. The app helps individuals to invest in multiple asset classes including equities, mutual funds, P2P lending, gold, and even charitable investing to build a well-rounded portfolio.
Cube Wealth - Highlights
| Startup Name | Cube Wealth |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Mumbai |
| Founder | Satyen Kothari |
| Sector | Banking, FinTech, Wealth Management |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Parent Organization | Cube Consumer Services Pvt. Ltd. |
| Website | bankoncube.com |
About Cube Wealth and How it Works
Cube Wealth - USP
Cube Wealth Founders and Team
Cube Wealth - Work Culture
How was Cube Wealth Started
Cube Wealth - Name, Tagline and Logo
Cube Wealth - User Acquisition
Cube Wealth - Business Model and Revenue Model
Cube Wealth - Startup Challenges
Cube Wealth - Competitors
Cube Wealth - Funding and Investors
Cube Wealth - Growth
Cube Wealth - Future Plans
About Cube Wealth and How it Works
Cube Wealth is a subscription-based automated wealth technology application that works on the concept of disciplined long-term wealth creation. So the basic idea is to simplify access to quality investments for professionals. The biggest convenience that Cube Wealth brings for its members is having their entire portfolio managed under one mobile application & being managed by money managers with decades of experience. Cube Wealth gives each consumer access to services that were only available to High Networth Individuals to date. Users pay no charges for India investments, and can start with as little as Rs 5,000 in SIPs.
A non-refundable 1% transaction fee from retail investors and 2% from institutional investors is charged on the loan amount disbursed. This is deducted from the first EMI. There are no additional fees to invest in P2P lending through Cube.
Cube Wealth's interests are aligned with their customers. The company follows a disciplined approach to advising clients based on their needs & investment timeframe. The Cube Wealth application has a search function that any user can try based on their ability to take risks and timeframe to see the best options for them. All the options are shown in a normalized fashion with the same elements of risk, timeframe, return rate, liquidity, etc. All the mentioned parameters make it simple for users to compare and pick a product that is ideal for them.
Cube Wealth provides access to all of the curated asset options and dedicated Wealth Coach to each of the members. Non-members can download the app for free and get one free wealth consultation. This application gets industry-standard commissions from the asset managers.
It's our promise to our customers that we will not sell you anything based on the commission we get - rather, it will be based on what is right for you. says the founder of Cube Wealth.
At Cube Wealth, they advise all their customers that before investing in anything they should set up an emergency fund in cash and cash equivalents. As anyone with expertise in the industry would say that the commission earned is so small that even the costs for processing the transaction are not covered in most cases. But Cube Wealth recommends this as step one because it is the right thing to do in your investing journey.
At Cube Wealth, the investors get four magic ingredients:
- A dedicated Wealth Coach: The investor gets a dedicated Wealth Coach who will provide personalized guidance on how to think about finances based on the life stage, risk tolerance, and existing investments.
- Top Tier Investment Managers: This app gives access to top money managers in India who have over 10+years of experience in creating wealth for Ultra-rich and have managed over $2 billion. Cube Wealth has hand-selected these managers based on their track record and quality.
- One Simple App: One app to simplify, track and automate all the investments. One can invest & manage wealth creation in a few simple steps.
- Holistic portfolio management: The Wealth Coach assigned to the individuals will do a detailed portfolio analysis to create the best portfolio to be invested in.
StartupTalky
Cube Wealth - USP
In this era of data explosion, there are a lot of applications helping an investor to invest in certain specific investments & which impact the overall portfolio for the investor. Cube Wealth's USP is simplifying the wealth creation process to make it available for everyone, and to handle the entire lifecycle of the investments from short term savings for a wedding or an MBA next year to long term savings for retirement or buying a house.
Cube Wealth - Founders and Team
Satyen Kothari is one of the most successful names in the Indian fintech industry. With notable achievements on his name, Satyen is the Founder and CEO of Cube Wealth. But Cube Wealth is the second brainchild of this brilliant entrepreneur, the first being Citrus Payments. Citrus Payment's overall strategy, user experience, product placement schemes, and strategic alliances drove the company to a valuation of $100 million in 4 years. All in all, he's a genius serial entrepreneur.
In a short span of 18 years, Satyen Kothari has successfully started companies in multiple segments and industries including areas of marketing automation, social e-commerce, and strategy/design consulting in Silicon Valley and India. Also, the man has a very enriched experience of working with start-ups and relatively larger companies like Intuit, First Data, Cisco, AOL, Yahoo, frog design & App.
This brilliant entrepreneur is also an angel investor. Satyen has invested in 14 companies, all in the versatile spaces of marketplaces, payments, solar, education, and payments. This serial entrepreneur has a Masters from Stanford University in technology, entrepreneurship, HCI, Computer Science and a BE in Computer Science and Engineering from Bombay University.
Cube Wealth - Work Culture
Cube Wealth team comprises of engineers, designers and customer journey experts. They currently have over 30 people in the team. There is a real culture at Cube Wealth of doing whatever it takes to get the job done and achieve the best outcome for the employees.
The Cube Wealth team discusses the ideas and talk about what is going on in their lives, in the world, in fintech, and at Cube. This team has no ranks, only roles. The daily lunch routine helps them establish this sense of equality. It's this equality that makes the conversation free-flowing and rich. And yes, even the quieter engineers contribute! The Cube Wealth team knows one another well, has strong bonds and likes each other too. They generate ideas very organically as a team.
Our single biggest decision on our business was made at lunch thanks to a debate on who we thought we were, who our customers thought we were and who we wanted to be - Satyen quotes
StartupTalky
How was Cube Wealth Started
It was 2016 and Satyen had just sold Citrus Pay, the last company that he had founded, for $130 million. Suddenly he was surrounded by all types of wealth and asset managers. He then realized that the wealthy have access to amazing financial advice and some fabulous asset managers.
In recent years, there has been a steep rise in the number of people looking to invest in assets such as mutual funds, equities & other instruments. With this surge in the numbers, also came in a lot of companies providing misleading investment advisory services & instruments which resulted in people losing their money due to the incompetence of the advisors. Also, the investors were given wrong advice. All this was because the best of advisors were only limited to a particular set of HNWIs and UHNWIs.
After speaking to hundreds of senior professionals & entrepreneurs, he realized that
a) People are mis-sold investment products
b) They don't have access to quality money managers & assets
c) They don't have time to research & build their portfolio
"How do I make the same quality of advice and access to the same top-performing asset managers possible for everyone?" was the thought that germinated the Cube Wealth seed in Satyen's mind.
Satyen felt a strong sense of injustice because he always needed this quality of advisory but only the very rich could access them. And he wanted to change that. He had also discussed it with investors from Singapore, US & Japan about the product & need for high-quality products & services to the large & aspirational middle class in India.
Cube Wealth - Name, Tagline and Logo
The name 'Cube' was picked because it is a simple yet multi-dimensional and visualizable physical object. In wealth management, a lot of dimensions determine the result of returns. And yet at any time, only one side of that complex equation matters to the user - the money that an investor may be saving to buy a house, or to park extra money for the long term. Cube focuses on that singular aspect that matters to each customer while handling all the other dimensions of the problem space elegantly.
Cube Wealth - User Acquisition
From the beginning of the Cube Wealth application, the team has focused on maintaining the 3i approach internally: Integrity, Intensity & Intelligence, which is always about being transparent & providing the highest value to the customers.
Every customer of Cube Wealth gets only the best of investment managers from around India. The team does a thorough due diligence of each investment manager who is impaneled on Cube Wealth. They look at their investment thesis, past performances, leadership teams, assets under their management, investor support processes and many more such attributes. Last but not least, the team researches and tests every investment with their own money and handpick the top-performing advisors.
Cube Wealth was Initially only available to members on an invite-only basis. This helped them to create a strong referral base & spread the Cube Investment Philosophy. The team had majorly used channels such as Linkedin, Twitter, and PR. The whole process was catered towards providing the complete portfolio experience to users.
The most important factor which helped Cube Wealth distinguish themselves in the market was the exemplary customer service experience which helped them retain & acquire new users. They have a two-staged model in place for customer service:
- A dedicated Wealth Coach
- Dedicated Whatsapp group with our leadership team
For every customer, the idea is to help them build an ideal portfolio for wealth creation with both short term & long term assets. Cube wealth does a complete portfolio analysis for the customers & understand their detailed requirements before providing any allocation advice. After this, it comes to step one. They ensure that all the investor's money is parked only in high-quality assets that are mapped to their goals. Lastly, they also have a function to automate regular investments via the Cube Wealth's SuperSIP feature. All these steps are critical - analysis, quality recommendations, and disciplined regular investing - to place the customer on track towards a healthy and wealthy financial future.
After acquiring the first hundred customers, Cube Wealth doubled its efforts towards referrals, press releases & spreading awareness on social media. The fundamental strategy is to provide maximum value to the customers who use the Cube Wealth application.
Cube Wealth - Business Model and Revenue Model
Currently, Cube Wealth has not worked out a fully functional revenue model. the reason being that all the users can avail the services for zilch cost. Also, the personal fund manager advice service is issued to the users without any additional charges.
The company is currently earning commissions from funds when an investor commits to a long-term plan of around ten years.
"Since we have just started, we are focusing on creating the habit among users to invest, and we teach them how and where to put their hard-earned money to build a rounded portfolio," Satyen said.
Cube Wealth - Startup Challenges
The biggest challenge in the current wealth management sector is the Human-centric processes, time is taken in KYC, and due diligence is a few of the factors which do not allow fund houses to focus on small retail investors. Also, with multiple advisors & multiple investment products, people tend to often overlook the value of the investment portfolio as a whole.
For solving these problems, Cube Wealth has The Triangle Strategy.
The base of the triangle is the Cube Wealth app, which is an automated investment platform. It helps investors get easy access and analysis to all the asset classes in their existing portfolio, in one place.
- In the digital era, when it comes to investment, the human element is important.
- And Cube Wealth have catered it through phone service teams, WhatsApp groups, as well as teams sitting in five different cities as of now.
- Adding top-tier SEBI-registered advisors and RBI-registered asset providers that help guide every user on the right portfolio for their needs, cash flow, current investments, and risk appetite.
Cube Wealth - Competitors
There are applications like Paytm Money and ET money operating in the same market. But Cube Wealth is different from these competitors. The reason being these two companies mainly focusing on mutual funds and mostly catering to first-time investors.
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Cube Wealth - Funding and Investors
The company raised USD 2 million in October 2018 in its Series A round from a handful of investors, including Singapore-headquartered venture fund Beenext, Japan-based Asuka Holding, and the US-based 500 Startups.
On june 1st 2020, it announced mid-series funding of $500,000 led by Satyen Kothari, founder of Cube Wealth. Other participants in this round include Singapore-based venture fund Beenext and Japan-based Asuka Holding.
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21st October 2018 | Series A round | $2 million | Beenext, Asuka Holding and 500 Startups |
| 1st June 2020 | Mid Series | $500,000 | Satyen Kothari, Beenext, Asuka Holding |
The funds have been used to grow & scale the company in India's top cities like - Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune—and also expand to Europe and America to tap the Non-Resident Indians there.
Cube Wealth - Growth
Currently Cube Wealth has offices in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai & Hyderabad. Cube has effectively simplified and automated the lives of members across 26 cities and 5 countries in their journey of wealth creation and management.
Cube Wealth is trusted by many senior professionals from companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Deloitte, KPMG, & many more.
They have partnered with top wealth advisors in the country like Purnartha, Wealth First, Ambit, Alchemy, Motilal & Oswal among others.
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Cube Wealth - Future Plans
The company currently curates 17 investment options for its users, who can start investing with as little as INR 15,000 (USD 200) to as high as a few crores (one crore is 10 million rupees, or about USD 150,000).
The investment portfolio on Cube Wealth's mobile app includes mutual funds, stocks, equity, and peer-to-peer (P2P) investments, among others. Recently, the company has also made stocks listed in the US and other countries, such as Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, and a few others, available for Indian investors who can put a maximum of USD 250,000 into non-Indian stocks every year.
In the near future, they plan to monitor & add more efficient investment products to help users have a complete portfolio.
Link : https://startuptalky.com/cube-wealth-portfolio-management/
Author :- Vidhi Punamiya
August 09, 2020 at 02:42PM
startuptalky