pinBox, Digital Pension Provider for Self-Employed Women & Informal Workers Raises Funds

By: WE Staff | Wednesday, 21 July 2021

PinBox, a global PensionTech company aiming to provide digital micro-pension and social security inclusion, has received a $ 1 million investment from Venture Catalysts (Vcats), a combined incubator and accelerator fund 9unicorns.

PinBox, founded in 2016 by industry veterans Parul Seth Khanna and Gautam Bhardwaj, uses technology, process innovation, and a simple, intuitive user interface to address friction and access challenges in delivering micro-pension and insurance solutions to underserved informal sector workers.

pinBox has partnered with WhatsApp to make saving as simple as texting.

Gautam Bhardwaj, co-founder of pinBox, stated during a discussion about the need for micro-pension products that self-employed women and informal workers who lack savings and insurance are more vulnerable to risks. As a result, products aimed specifically at this demographic were required.

“Without comprehensive social protection, we are staring at an old-age poverty crisis that will soon impact everyone globally. By 2050, this problem will become too large and irreversible. We must urgently encourage and enable young, economically active citizens to start saving for a 25-year retirement,” Bharadwaj said.

pinBox has collaborated extensively with governments, regulators, financial inclusion stakeholders, and DFIs such as the World Bank, UNCDF, and UKAID in Asia and Africa to expand digital micro-pension and social protection coverage to self-employed women and informal sector workers, including gig workers.

pinBox previously assisted the Rwanda government in the launch of Africa's first fully digital, government-sponsored micro-pension and insurance scheme, which now has nearly 1.5 million subscribers. In Kenya, it has deployed its pensionTech platform to provide an integrated pension and insurance solution to approximately 17 million non-salaried workers.

In India, pinBox is collaborating with HDFC Pension, SBI AMC, and leading insurers to provide NPS and customised saving and insurance solutions to India's 400 million informal sector workers who do not have access to social security.