HT Media-owned financial daily newspaper Mint has entered into the finance and investment segment with a new app called MintGenie.
MintGenie allows users to track live markets and find all information about mutual funds and stocks. In a nutshell, users can get the latest price movements, financial ratios, historical annual & quarterly results of all the companies listed under the BSE and NSE.
The app also has a feature of learning investment by using virtual money, besides the must-have: a portfolio tracker. Like the paper (Mint), stress and attention seem to have been paid to the design and UI, both of which work hard to be a differentiator.
This is the third instance when the owner of a financial daily has entered into the fintech segment. Times Internet Limited, a subsidiary of BCCL, which publishes financial daily the Economic Times, has a similar app called ETMoney.
Network18-run Moneycontrol had also launched a similar platform called Moneycontrol Transact. However, the company later discontinued the app. For stock investment, Moneycontrol has a tie-up with smallcase and for the mutual fund with Fisdom.
MintGenie’s competitors include Paytm Money but the Noida-based major’s app has more use cases such as health insurance, term insurance and NPS investment. Then there is the venerable ValueResearchOnline which has been around the longest and has expanded to cover stock recommendations and an advisory service too, like Moneycontrol.
MintGenie is currently sticking to knowledge sharing, with gamified tests to check the user’s awareness and investment savviness, besides a recommendation section that is limited to health insurance for now.
MintGenie is likely to add more use cases in the app in the coming months to cover more aspects of investment and finance. According to Entrackr sources, HT Media has been working on the app for the past year and looks like an attempt to diversify the group’s business. Some experts also outline that HT Media is also trying to mirror the strategy of Times Internet.
While the category is definitely crowded, Mint is clearly hoping to leverage the brand’s credibility to carve out a niche, especially with key sectors like mutual funds set to boom with easier entry norms now. Adding actual transaction options could potentially be on the agenda at some stage.
HT Media also runs digital properties including job portal HT Shine and movie review site DesiMartini. However, these products aren’t popular in the segments they operate.
Mint Genie faces a formidable challenge. It is no secret that no one likes to enter all their investment details repeatedly, and once you make a portfolio tracker in an app or a site, that can be a pretty powerful reason to stay on with that brand, unless they do something drastic like major glitches (Rediff’s money section) or a full shutdown.
