The document provides an overview of a fintech capstone project aimed at developing a personal financial management solution. It discusses: 1. The initial project phases focused on product discovery and defining deliverables like an MVP and business model canvas. 2. The proposed product is a digital assistant that helps optimize users' financial planning and behavior for long-term financial security. It aims to provide personalized recommendations and eliminate the need for financial advisors. 3. Next steps include validating the business model canvas, studying differentiation from competitors, and moving to the validation phase of the project.

1. DCM Project Diary
Ayushi Mona (024) | Raunak Haldipur (033)
Introduction
The DCM project kicked off with a brief on the timeline of the deliverable that were expected from us at each stage along with a brief from
Siddharth Sir on expectations and project structure.
The first phase so far has concentrated on Product Discovery. Overall, the deliverable for the Industry Capstone Project includes:
1. Minimum Viable Product (Team Prototype)
2. Product - Market Fit
3. Finalized Business Model Canvas
4. Customer Development Methodology
Project Introduction
The project is a Fintech solution on Personal Financial Management. The way this idea occurred to us is when we noticed that B-School
students at MICA are unaware about personal financial management and importance of personal finance beyond concepts. Many of them
didn't know what financial products are available and in which financial projects they can invest. This is when we came up with the idea to
make them aware and at the same time manage their wealth in a personalized way.

2. We also realized that unlike financial management - personal financial management is affected heavily by individual traits and psychological
habits.
Most major Fintech players are crowded in the digital payments space. There are at least 20 leading payment app brands in India. From
telecom operators to cab aggregators to banks to VC funded independent startups all have a payment solution and they all are an app.
However, beyond the mesh of wallet solutions in the market, nobody is paying specific interest to personal banking on a digital platform
though there is a lot of manpower investment in the form of relationship and financial service managers otherwise.
When we started out the Project, both the partners were working on different lines – one was working on a digital passbook which would
just integrate all financial touchpoints together so as to present a composite view of all wallets, accounts, and financial products together;
while the other team mate’s focus was on driving digital payments into the unorganized sector.
Post subsequent discussions, we decided to work together on a personal finance product which would merge the transactional aspect of the
latter with a collated personal financial charter from the former.
Hence, if we were to summarize at this stage – our product is a Digital Assistant that helps people twerk their financial planning
behavior in order to optimize for a safe financial future.
The differentiation is that:
1. There is no actual sale of a financial product so that the customer does not feel that there is an underlying motive to earn a
commission.
2. Looks beyond obvious things like interest rates and possibility of return to include aspects of financial planning that aren’t given
enough importance – nominees, sway in rates, tracking changes in own financial objectives, charges, best date to close EMI and credit
card payments.
Essentially, a Jeeves that panders to all your financial whims and caters to even those problems that you don’t realize are important until
much later.
Four Action Framework
Reduce
The objective is to reduce confusion around building, and, sustaining a financial plan. While most people are aware of surface level details
such as the extent of risk/return or recovery of an investment option – people do not dive deeper, especially with respect to charges,
margins, nominees, account updates and all such details that are as material as the financial decision that someone is making to invest or
take a new liability or purchase an asset.

3. Create
Personalized financial product based on income level and liabilities taken up by the user. This will give the user an optimized investment
proposal based on his propensity to keep aside money for investment. This will be improved over time by studying the income and expense
patterns of the user. The user will also be given suggestions on what expense should be incurred when and whether he can claim any tax
benefits from it based on his business or profession.
Eliminate
Eliminate the need for financial advisors. Currently financial advisors are entirely unorganized. A lot of people believe they do not need
official financial advisory services and those who do often feel shortchanged due to mis-selling or really high margins that eat into their hard
– earned money. A large section of middle class households feel that formal financial management services can only be availed with an
expert at hand, this is an apprehension we want to do away with.
Raise
The accuracy of the return on investment of a particular financial product. The transparency of the financial product must be raised. The
user must know what exactly he/she is investing in. We also aim to raise the general level of financial awareness of the users. This way, no
one should be able to take a particular investor for a ride.

4. The Business Model Canvas
Key Partners
 Insurance Companies
 Payment Banks/
Options
For payment of credit
bill, various payment
options like
Credit/Debit Card, Net
banking, Digital wallets
like Paytm etc.
Key Activities
 Identifying investments
 Calculating Income and
Expenditure
Value Proposition
 Hassle-free investments
 No need to do
extensive research or
pay a portfolio manager
for making investments
 Dynamic- Learns your
risk appetite over time
 Mobile application
(Android and iOS)
____________________
Revenue Streams
 Subscription Fees
 Commission on
Investment
Transactions
Customer Relationships
 Credit to everyone
 Customers can choose
from a plethora of
retailers
 Merchants reach
customers they could
never reach before by
onboarding the Simpl
app
 Merchants will do away
with record
maintenance
Customer Segments
 Customers who do not
have financial
knowledge and want to
invest their money
 Customers who don’t
have the time to
research investment
product by themselves
 Tech savvy millennials
 Tech averse audience
____________________
Cost Structure
 Application
Development cost
 Marketing Spends
(Online and Offline)
 Customer Acquisition
cost
 Web Infrastructure
cost
 Employee Salaries
Key Resources
 Technological
competence
 Customer Service
support
 Sales team
 UX/UI designers
 Web hosting
infrastructure
 CRM tool
Channels
 Offline: Aggressive
merchant acquisition
though bank branches.
Tie-up with Banks for
the same.
 Online: Email,
Facebook, LinkedIn,
Instagram, SEO, SEM
for online merchant
acquisition

5. Next steps
Besides working on the preliminary business canvas for our idea and the 4 action framework, we also took out some time to study what was
happening in the space of digital payments and Fintech. We kept ourselves abreast with a lot of developments happening in this space and
are now looking at the Validation phase next. We also need to figure the defense moat around our idea and ensure that differentiation we
have provided is maintained.