Several Indians prefer to form a small community to host and manage an event. It could be a college alumni group, travel group, sports community, or as simple as a religious event in your locality. WhatsApp is generally the go-to app for coordination for such communities. For finances, however, apps like WhatsApp don’t cut it.
An easy-to-use group finance management system can solve many problems for such communities by creating trust between members and easily resolving disputes. Ahmedabad-based startup Ticmarc aims to be this elusive go-to platform for group finance management.
Founded in 2020, Ticmarc offers features such as creating a group with friends, creating a group kitty, and more. It also allows people to track personal balance and group expenses, and know ‘who owes who’. It also lets you remind your group about a pending payment via SMS or WhatsApp. A new version of the platform will have a payment gateway integration, allowing users to make payments.
It’s still early days for Ticmarc as it has 1,500 users currently. “The scale is quite less because we have not gone out to the market and publicized, yet,” company founder Rushabh Shah told Entrackr.
On the payment gateway integration, Shah explained that they are in talks with a couple of payment aggregators as the company plans to launch a virtual card, like a prepaid card. The integration is expected to happen by next month.
The integration will also help the company monetize the platform, which is currently at a pre-revenue stage. Shah said the company could generate revenue from bank interchange fees among other sources. He added that the company is also reviewing recent updates to the regulations relating to fintech platforms so that they could launch compliant features.
Ticmarc, however, is now looking to promote the platform aggressively. One of the immediate plans includes increasing the user base from 1,500 to 50,000 in the next four to five months. It has also set the target of having 75,000 users by March 2024.
That said, there are quite a few fintech players as the sector continues to be one of the hottest startup sectors in India. While quite a few firms have begun offering peer-to-peer payments and similar services, Ticmarc aims to solve the unique problem of trust deficit for finances in a group setting. Firms like Splitkaro for shared payments and ShelfPay (for kitty or group cards) could be considered among the nearest rivals to Ticmarc. International firms like Splitwise are also quite popular.
