In today’s episode Shameer Sachdev, Founder & MD at Growth Gorilla, shares with us his hypothesis on why he thought he could win by adding value no else did at the time in FinTech, the power of diversity when building Purposeful FinTechs, how Growth Gorilla is having impact in millions of customers - despite not having a Financial Services offering, and the one thing we can do as FinTechers to have 10x results in solving for financial stress.

After discussing all things impact and purpose deep dive on how we can grow FinTechs during times of turbulence and budget cuts. He shares with us the current key trends and challenges that FinTechs are facing when it comes to scaling and growth, how to craft a bullet proof retention strategy, how influencer marketing and the so called fin-fluencers are here to supercharge your FinTech impact driven by customer demand on financial educational content, and much much more!

If you enjoy this Purpose Driven FinTech pod, please subscribe in YouTube, follow and leave a 5 star rating on Spotify and a review on Apple podcasts. Remember to connect in LinkedIn to keep the conversation going.

Let’s dive into it!

👉 You can find Shameer here

1. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shameersachdev/
2. LinkedIn Growth Gorilla: https://www.linkedin.com/company/growthgorilla/
3. Website: https://www.growthgorilla.co.uk/
4. Shameer’s Podcast: https://www.thefmlpodcast.com/

👉 And you can find Monica here:

1. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicamillares/
2. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@moni_millares
3. TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moni_millares
4. Website: https://moni-millares.mystrikingly.com/

If you enjoy this pod, please follow and leave a 5 star rating on Spotify and a review on Apple podcasts

Questions:

1. How to grow FinTech during budget constraints?
2. What is bulletproof retention strategy?
3. How to build purpose-driven FinTechs with diversity?
4. What are finfluencers and influencer marketing in FinTech?
5. How to retain customers with limited budget?
6. What is impeccable customer service approach?
7. How to solve financial stress with 10x impact?
8. What are current FinTech growth trends and challenges?
9. How to build diverse founder ecosystem?
10. What is customer retention versus acquisition strategy?
11. How to create valuable purposeful helpful content?
12. What is the role of diversity in FinTech innovation?
13. How to grow profitably not at all costs?
14. What are pain points diverse founders surface?
15. How to maximize lifetime value with existing customers?
16. What is customer service as retention team?
17. How to navigate macroeconomic climate in FinTech?
18. What are growth strategies for scaling FinTechs?
19. How to be more creative with fewer resources?
20. What is financial education content demand?

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Production and marketing by Monica Millares. For inquiries about being in the show, coaching, consulting, creative collabs, sponsoring the podcast or creating or editing your podcast email Monica at fintechwithmoni@gmail.com

Disclaimer: This episode does not constitute professional nor financial advice and does not represent the opinion nor views of my current, past or future employers. The guest has agreed to record and release our conversation for the use of this podcast and promotion in social media.

The Importance of Customer Retention

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Very important pain point is how do we retain them? My view on retention is really straightforward to be honest with you. It's about providing impeccable customer service. That covers a lot of things, but providing impeccable customer experience. From the moment that they touch your brand to signing up to do the KYC piece and getting through onto your platform.

The emails that you then follow up with and send should be valuable, purposeful, helpful. The content that you're then putting out on your socials is not just for attracting new customers, but for keeping your existing customers engaged. And again, they should be valuable, purposeful, helpful. And then every contact with your customer service team.

Introduction to Purpose Driven FinTech

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Hello and welcome back to Purpose Driven FinTech. I am your host, Moni Millares. In today's episode, we put Growth Gorilla to the test. We have Shamir Sashtev, founder and MD at Growth Gorilla. And he shares with us his hypothesis on why he thought his business could win by adding value no one was giving at a time.

He expands on the power of diversity and why it is the key to unlocking building purposeful FinTechs. He shares how growth gorilla is having impact in millions of customers despite not having a financial services offering and the one thing we can do as fintechers to have 10 times the results in solving for the problem of financial stress.

If you enjoyed this pod, please give it a like, reach out, share, and let's go for it.

Meet Shamir Sashtev from Growth Gorilla

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Hello Shamir. How are you? Welcome to the show. Hi Monica. Um, well, thank you. Thank you for having me on.

Has been reduced. So we need to be more creative. We need to be more resourceful to then still have impact and still drive those numbers, but we without the resources or with less resources. So this is a brilliant conversation. Thank you for joining us.

Shameer Sachdev: Cool, I'm looking forward to it.

Monica Millares: Thank you.

Building Purpose Driven FinTechs

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Monica Millares: So first things first, this is a podcast about how we can build more purpose driven fintechs.

So what's your take? How do we build more purpose driven?

Shameer Sachdev: I thought about this question a lot, and I think boils down to two areas really. For me, the most important thing really is, the diversity piece, I think we need a more diverse range of founders. It's no secret that VCs are heavily invested in and behind.

Monica Millares: Okay.

Shameer Sachdev: That needs to be given. So Yeah, for me, I think, If we're going to, if we want to start there and you want the answers in summary it's we, need more diversity from the outset.

Monica Millares: Yeah, I'd like that, and I'm going to build on that.

I like that you use the definition of diversity very broadly. It was not like women in FITEC. It was like all sorts of founders is with all sorts of backgrounds. And exactly, like you say, it's not that There's something wrong with the current cohort.

So that's why diversity would bring a different angle.

And then given that it brings a different angle, then it opens up tons of opportunities, actually.

Shameer Sachdev: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I think we I think there's also, there's other elements to it as well. We've seen some of the most successful companies being founded by women. Look at starting back in the UK talk about female CEOs.

Yeah. So many others as well. So I, think, the, proof has been provided now. And I think VCs just need to have a bit more of an open mind.

Monica Millares: Definitely. So let's move on to you as such.

Growth Gorilla's Mission and Impact

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Monica Millares: So you have this term helping fintechs grow without limits. What does that mean? Can you tell us a little bit about Growth Corrida and your purpose?

Shameer Sachdev: Yeah, of course. If I start a bit, you're talking about a greater bit of first and what we do, and then we get on to helping projects grow without limits. We're a great marketing agency. We've been around for about seven years now. We focus.

I was in financial services. I was marketing at a trading platform for a while for about five years. And then I decided that I particularly enjoyed marketing, and then decided to do some consulting, which eventually led into the development of the agency. I think from a purpose?

perspective, the reason I always focused on fintech being, begin with.

It's partly down to my background, which was it was an online trading platform. It was a, an area that I was very, familiar with naturally. But what made it interesting was that the FinTech space, over the last seven years is it's a hotbed of disruption.

I think that's our way of saying to our customers, our clients, our prospects that, we can support them with their growth and not to have a cap on what's achievable.

Monica Millares: And then just to build on that. Okay. Because exactly, that's a very nice mindset. It's we'll help you grow beyond what you think it's achievable. What was your hypothesis when you started the business? Because there's so many agencies, right? There's so many businesses, whichever it is. So what made you think I'm going to be different, I'm going to help customers in a different way.

Shameer Sachdev: Yeah, so the hypothesis at the time was, just, was pretty simple I'd left, the, trading platform and, FinTech was not quite a word just yet. It was seven years ago, it was still bubbling around in the background. But. From my perspective, it was more around just helping app based or tech based financial services companies, that had a really simple formula marketing website, online signup journey, and then some sort of app.

Either way, it's the backend dashboard on the web or a mobile app. That was it, because that wasn't particularly popular at that time. That, that set up now you see it everywhere. You see everywhere from free trade to starling bank to. Everything tech basically has those three ingredients.

let's bear in mind that when I started working at the, the brokerage, it was a PR event that we launched our app. We were still manually checking KYC. There wasn't on, on Fido hadn't. Been embedded at all. The applicants were coming in, we will check, put them through world check or whatever, and then we were then going out to them and asking for their, documents and stuff.

So it was a, it's a really, manual process. I'm, older than I look I I held from back in the days when We were opening client accounts by calling them up and actually receiving paper forms filled out. And then they would have to actually post their passports, and utility bill and all of that sort of stuff.

First and foremost. And then second of all, that time SEO and PPC and that sort of stuff was, a lot more focused around e commerce and, FMCG and stuff like that. It and social media was basically non existent at that point. It's I think, none of our competitors were running campaigns on Instagram and TikTok wasn't even a word that had been had been even thought of just yet. And Yeah.

decided to just start reaching out to, Yeah.

FinTech brands and having a conversation and saying look, this is my background.

I think I can help you. And, it turns out I could.

Monica Millares: Yeah, good for you.

Challenges and Trends in FinTech Growth

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Monica Millares: And it seems like the environment has changed a lot since then, right? Now that you said, yeah, we used to do KYC with paper as such it feels whoa, that was such a long time ago.

But then even though technology has changed at a super rapid pace. It seems like the problem statement that we are trying to solve, that it's like helping people have less stress with money and better financial well being, it seems like that hasn't changed, as in improved so much since then.

Shameer Sachdev: Yeah.

Monica Millares: technology has grown, fintechs have grown, but the problem statement has grown as well.

We haven't solved it that well. this is a very important question. How are you as Growth Gorilla actually having impact on customers financial lives? Silence. Silence. Silence.

Shameer Sachdev: answer because to a certain degree, we're at we're at the behest of the, industry, right?

And it's, the product's about disrupting traditional home ownership. So they call it gradual home ownership. I think the nearest thing akin to it would be something like Helped Buy, but it's actually a little bit better than that. And that, that's a really unusual proposition.

When we look at direct impact, that, that's what you see was really cool. And we've got the first one the first sort of family in and be like, Oh, okay. It's a really long process buying a property, right? It's not short. And then suddenly 10 to 25 and 50 and yeah, now they're well over a couple of hundred.

A bit choppy at best and mutual funds, which are the, management fees are ridiculous. We're talking sort of 5 percent plus it's crazy. Here was this app go trade that allowed Indonesian investors to access global markets. For free basically, they did that monetize FX fees, et cetera, and stuff.

There it was it's thousands upon thousands of users and there's as I said, we work with 40 different brands. So there's so many more examples, but all of those things it's I think I did sit down at one point and worked at how many signups we or accounts we've opened across all of our accounts as well into the millions.

Monica Millares: Oh,

Shameer Sachdev: just to know that we've impacted millions of people, being the conduit and supporting our clients Yeah.

Monica Millares: It is. And I was really genuinely looking forward to what you were about to say, because many times we think, Oh, I'm a fintech, I'm a B2B, B2C fintech, right? So it's like the impact is very clear because I have a product with the customer directly. But for everyone who's behind that fintech, supporting that fintech do their jobs, basically, it's sometimes a little bit.

Not that direct, a little bit ambiguous, a little bit behind the scenes, but it's super cool to be like, yeah, even if we are, part, anyone that is part of the ecosystem is still having impact in people's lives. Therefore, all of us need to think of ourselves as people who are having impact in the main

Shameer Sachdev: Yeah.

Monica Millares: solving.

Brands or organizations who frankly speaking, are having a negative impact we think that they especially timing when crypto was really bubbling away and that was a crazy period and we were getting, contacted, every other day, by the latest platform with the latest, can I say shit coin?

Is that all right? That, or they wanted to do an ICO or whatever it is. And we we just stayed away from them because it was just it's not something that I want to be involved with. And I think there's a there is an ethical piece behind that. But I think by and large, Yeah.

Monica Millares: One of the questions that I referred to at the beginning of the conversation was, we fintechs as an industry, we've been around for 8, 10, 12 years, roughly. There is a ton of money that has been invested in the industry.

We, we have proof of concept. It's been 10 years. We have some very successful fintechs as such, but like I said the, yes, we have had impact in customers. Yes, we have, but people still have a ton of stress. When it comes to money, the rising cost of living the layoffs retirement planning, there's still many, pain points.

You

Shameer Sachdev: that's what I mean by that is, is that I I think it's all well and good trying to educate your late twenties, early 30 year old and, having a nice friendly tone of voice about, financial products and stuff like that.

And that's helpful. But that's not going to have a material impact because by that time people's habits have formed, their opinions have formed. And

Monica Millares: Yeah.

So you need to go.

I think we need to go all the way down to primary school, elementary school, and, teaching financial education and making people financially literate needs to happen, at school, and they need to understand, the impacts of the decisions that they are making with their money.

Not knowing the difference between a fixed rate and a variable mortgage is just it's not acceptable and it's not the individual's fault. It's frankly, in my view, I think it's the government that has then let people down. So I think, Yeah.

That needs to happen as grassroots grassroots level.

I think it's as FinTechers. What can we do? I think there's probably two things we can do. I think the larger organizations need to lead by example, and they need to get in there and build these programs with schools directly, and help educate young people around money. And, you want some incentive, there's a very good reason why HSBC, Barclays, NatWest have child accounts.

And I think until that happens then we're not going to see that impact. But then the problem is, that we have to always work out, in these sorts of things whose interest is it in. For people to not be financially educated, and then that's usually the person who's or the individuals or the body that needs to be, highlighted.

And tasks for doing that. And then, Yeah.

Features, and all the stuff that goes with that, to support the, the, I would say not the individuals, but perhaps the, communities that have a tendency to, suffer from lack of financial education. And that, yeah that'd be my view in terms of, yeah, if you want to have a 10 times impact that needs to happen.

Monica Millares: I love that because

Maybe we start with that. With that, right? Rather than, Oh, we need to educate all the children. We start with a pilot. Like you could, that's it. Awesome. I want to change the conversation a little bit because of course, if we want to have ton of impact, we need to reach to these people. We need to put our products and education programs and whatever we're doing in front of people.

And just like we said at the beginning of the conversation, Resources are very tight at the moment. We do have diversity within the fintechs that we have, right? So we have the unicorns and super hyper growth fintechs, people in between, and the ones that are just getting started. So it's different maturity.

Shameer Sachdev: like you mentioned, obviously budget is a big one. All right. That's the biggest challenge, right? Yeah. There's a lack of budget. And that, that's going to be the, main issue. I think the, other challenges as well is that the landscape has changed as well in the sense that it's no longer growth at all costs.

It's now about profitability. That's, that is, that's, what business should have been about from day one, in my view but there's a lot of unlearning that needs to be done. And and I think we're now towards probably I think we're at now towards this end point with.

The Changing Fintech Landscape

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Those that didn't, they're not getting funded, but the ones that are still here, they are going to get funded. So yeah, so there's something I'm learning to do there.

Traditional Financial Services Entering Fintech

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Shameer Sachdev: I think the other challenges are going to be as well is that, previously, a lot of the traditional financial services companies tried to enter the fintech market and done a bad job of it.

I think one of the biggest challenges is going to be for a lot of fintechs is off the incumbents, as they enter the space with new propositions. Good example is Zinc. I know Wise has been doing their PR and they've been doing a great job of it. But I'm not being funny, HSBC has incredibly deep pockets.

It's, they're going to be they've got a lot of staying power.

The biggest takeaway here is now the banks are becoming the disruptors because they have a ton of money. The fintechs were trying to survive and then it's like the roles are reversing to

Shameer Sachdev: a good, there's a good saying That I like, which is when the center collapses, the periphery becomes the center. And we're, on our way there, but these things go full circle, right? I it's, banks will start to lead the way they'll become the disruptors. And then on the back of that, people will break away and we'll have new companies and all it will start all over again.

So yeah, so I think those are the biggest challenges for the moment.

Monica Millares: cool. Cool. And then. So those are big challenges, right?

Strategies for Overcoming Budget Challenges

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Shameer Sachdev: Yeah, no, I think so picking off some of those challenges.

I think that if you've got a budget issue, then, I, think I've got some two responses to that. So I think one is that come to terms with it very, quickly. It's not, it's going to be like that for a little while, accept it make your peace.

And. Align yourself with your, CFO, is now your best friend as a CMO. And I think you've got to do two things there so much as two sort of responses. One is any activity that you're doing, any marketing activity that you're doing. I think you've really got to ask yourself, are we is this going to drive results, tangible results, or are we just doing it for the sake of doing it?

Why we do it? If we did half as much, would it have the same impact? And then just really, going through your, strategy piece your, all your channels that way. And then I think then from that, also thinking about creative and being creative, And then going back to that speaking about just do things for the sake of it, is that ad that you're putting out there?

The game is not volume anymore. The game is quite it's the game's not, quantity anymore. The game's quality now. And then the second thing I said about see if becoming the CFO is best friend. I was talking to a CMO on Monday and, I said that one of my clients has cut a deal with a CFO and he started laughing and he said, cut a deal.

And I was like, yes we carried on talking as he goes I too have cut a deal with my CFO. And it's, a common thing that the senior CMOs are doing. They will come into the CFO and they're saying, look,

Monica Millares: Silence.

And I think if you start doing that, thing about that is, is that you'll become a lot more focused on your numbers as well.

You can't afford all the unnecessary stuff, and then when you start showing profits, you then have that cash back to then start doing the more interesting, sexy stuff that you wanted to do in the first place.

And then basically, if I have the results as part of the payoff of that is I get some budget to then

Shameer Sachdev: Yeah,

Monica Millares: go on the market.

So, it's a conversation from no resource to being resourceful. To then start getting traction.

Shameer Sachdev: yeah, exactly. And look I had a similar deal with my, my CEO when I was client side and that deal stayed in place for the five years I was there and we turned a 300 grand a year budget, 300 grand a year into a couple of million. And my department showed profit year on year, because of that.

It's, and I think it aligns, the marketing team with the rest of the company then as well.

Importance of Customer Retention

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Monica Millares: So one of the challenges is.

1. Are we acquiring the right type of customers? Because that is just a symptom of a very important pain point, that is, how do we retain them? Okay.

The content that you're then putting out on your socials is it's not just for attracting new customers, but for keeping your existing customers engaged. And again, they should be valuable. They should be purposeful. They should be helpful. And then every contact with your customer service team customer service team is, now, the customer retention team.

Feedback and then obviously product improvements, et cetera. And I think you can go you can get an add to that. I think once you got that baseline in place and you've got that nailed, I think instead about building out communities. With your existing customers and that creates brand affinity and brand loyalty and kind of all of those good things as well.

But you need you can't go out there and start building communities and with your customer base if, you're providing a rubbish customer experience, because you're just going to create a stick to be beaten with at that point. Yeah.

Monica Millares: You use big words in there that I want to unpack a little. One

Shameer Sachdev: Okay, sorry.

Monica Millares: experience, but I think we've covered customer experience as such.

The Role of Brand Loyalty

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So why should, if both of them are really good, why choose A over B? So part of that in my mind is, there's this brand affinity, brand loyalty plays a big difference. I may be wrong, but I think

Shameer Sachdev: No I think, it does massively, right? I think, in the UK, there's, I think there's some really good examples of brand loyalty in the UK. One example is British Airways, they have a diehard customer base. And, why is that?

I think that brand loyalty piece is massive for, I think scale ups to, to establish fintechs financial services companies. And I think that then that kind of goes, it circles all the way back to, being purpose driven, being impactful and resonating with your target customers.

I think that, the. The audiences now that we're trying to acquire, so you're millennials, your Gen Xs and your Gen Zs they're very, different from the boomer generation.

Monica Millares: Yeah.

If you can align your brand with your target customers Beliefs not just their needs and wants

Monica Millares: Okay. That opens up a whole new conversation because

then now.

Shameer Sachdev: brand marketer, by the way. But I do have a few views

Monica Millares: Yes, but that's cool because then now we're saying, I think it links really well. So that now we're saying, hey, millennials, Z's, they are. They are looking they are having like these introspective view of life as well, and then they are applying that to everything, not everything, but some of the things they consume.

Influencer Marketing in Fintech

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Monica Millares: And what I find fascinating Fintech specifically. I don't know, like this week I've seen this like at least twice on LinkedIn. Formula One, the future of Fintech. I'm like, what? And now we are Formula One and all these famous people into Fintech,

Which is very interesting.

It's not related to purpose, it's related to something that the audience relates to. Silence.

Silence.

Shameer Sachdev: is,

it's, a really interesting space at the moment. So I think first thing to say is, that FinTech financial services are so far behind on influence marketing. They're almost not even off the start line just yet.

There are very, there are a lot of very concerned compliance people on how. How to manage and adopt influencer marketing. But they're definitely warming up to it. We've been offering sort of influencer activity for, over a year now, and the climate has definitely changed within that year.

Not quite financial advice, but financial education and financial information.

Monica Millares: Silence.

It is very, expensive. And the reason for that is, is that financial services is big business. Silence. you're having to compete with the cost of media at their level, not at your level, at their level. So they're doing all of the out of home stuff.

Monica Millares: Yeah.

Shameer Sachdev: ETF providers, they cannot get influencer off the ground.

They just, struggling to, and they're only able to do it at really, small levels. If they are able to do it, it just doesn't get past the compliance team. I'll tell you offline. Some of the names that I've got, it's a whole list. You're, slightly smaller financial services companies are more able to do it, but they're entrenched in the ways that they're doing it for.

And that's the bit That makes it so attractive. Yeah,

Monica Millares: is so interesting because like you say it's, filling the gap that we discussed at the beginning and they are having impact because there's, I don't remember the research but lately you've seen this trend of customers are asking for Financial education. And now the trend in Instagram and TikTok that it's it's cool to say, it has a specific name that I forgot, but it's basically cool to say, no, I don't have enough funds to go to the party.

It's like open budgeting or yeah, lines.

Shameer Sachdev: the, yeah, it was open budgeting. Yeah.

that's, the latest one. Yeah,

Monica Millares: Yeah.

I don't think that's a bad thing at all whatsoever. I think it's a good thing. I I think the only negative about it all is that there's always going to be some bad actors in space. But if I'm honest with you. Every FinTech brand that we've worked with, spoken to about any form of influence marketing at the top of their list, it's about integrity and that they only want to be aligned with high quality creators.

And actually if there's any sort of crisis system to this you're, hugely incentivized to, go down the right path because that will be rewarded, several fold. Because brands do want to work with really, credible individuals.

Monica Millares: definitely. Cool.

Strategic Questions for Fintech Growth

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Shameer Sachdev: Yeah. Look we're, an agency. So for me, our business is. Solving problems for clients. And so therefore the strategic question behind that is what are the problems that clients can't solve for themselves and then how can we solve it for them? That that's, the only thing I see if, right now, spotting a couple of trends at the moment.

I've been looking at that and we've been approached about four or five times in the last six weeks or so, eight weeks or so. So we're building out a product to, to help support that. So I'll be launching that in the next sort of few weeks. So in, we're in Feb now, so it'll come out in March.

So yeah, so that that's, the strategic question that I'm asking myself.

Monica Millares: And that's very important because it comes back to. What we were saying, we don't have big budgets and with big budgets also means we don't have a ton of people to then repurpose all this content across different platforms because each platform has its own specificities. No, it's not just like changing the format.

The Impact of Diversity in Fintech

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Shameer Sachdev: I've said it several times. It's, that diversity piece again. I think if you want to have Yeah the most positive impact, I think investors really need to broaden who they're investing in, and then think about what they're investing in. And I think that would be?

brilliant.

Monica Millares: Definitely. And this is full circle because that was the very first topic that we discussed today. It's been a pleasure having you in the show Shamir.

Shameer Sachdev: It's been absolutely fantastic being on it. I really enjoyed this conversation today.

Monica Millares: Me too. Thank you. And everyone, see you next week. Ciao