A Gurugram startup is helping school students become money smart
YWCO, a B2B finance edtech startup, has developed a financial literacy curriculum for middle and high school students.
Parichita Bansal and her husband Ruchir Bansal founded Young Wealth Creators Organisation (YWCO) in 2020 to help children learn money management.
“Our philosophy is to provide education, experience, and exposure to empower the next generation to achieve their dreams consciously, consistently, and constantly; and to sustain it, all we need is to build an enriching environment and that environment exists, it's called school,” says Parichita.
The five-month course is designed by Bansal, a serial entrepreneur and retail investor.
“The YWCO is a one-of-a-kind educational programme designed for school kids that teaches them the value of investments and introduces them to the nitty-gritty of budgeting, savings, investments and risk management of assets for a rainy day. It is also an informative way to learn about money-related matters and plan a stable means of income for old age, health care, and other types of crises,” she adds.
The journey so far
Beginning in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic, Parichita taught underprivileged children. Later, she ran five-month virtual workshops for interested parents who wanted to educate their children about financial literacy. In 2021, she developed the content for schoolchildren in accordance with NEP (National Education Policy) 2020.
In 2022, the startup ran the beta test for the 20-week module and taught about 115 students in focus groups of 5-10-20-30 to understand the user engagement and captivity of the content, developing the role playing games and teacher ability.
“While doing that we generated about 10 lac rupees of revenue and asked only those parents who could pay,” she says.
How does it work?
After the school signs up with YWCO, it becomes an affiliate member of the startup and YWCO provides the school a registration link for the students. The school further shares the link with the students who have signed up. After filling out a form, students receive access codes to log in to the portal. Teachers/ instructors also have access to a similar portal.
Both students and teachers have a feedback form after every class to ensure effective participation of both teachers and students.
The module includes features like Career Day and Meet the CEO, which focus on building a mindset of wealth creation through all available vehicles--stock market, entrepreneurship, and real estate. Students can get a fundamental understanding of loans, insurance, tax planning, debit and credit cards.
Snapshot of student workshop
Career Day is basically a Facebook Live programme, where YWCO invites people at the top of their careers or professions to talk about their journey.
Meet the CEO talks will commence in July, where two students will be invited each month from YWCO community to interview a CEO and visit their workplace.
Business model and way ahead
The B2B finance edtech startup charges the school Rs 499 plus GST annually per student to lease content, which is uploaded on the website of the startup. Members can access the content and the YWCO community.
In FY22 the startup generated a revenue of Rs 1.2 crore and in FY23, it aims to touch Rs 2.5 crore.
So far YWCO is tied up with 30 schools such as Xavier’s, DAV, Sarvhitkari, St Kabir’s, SIL International, and Sacred Heart Convent School. In the future, the startup aims to create regional content to be able to reach rural India and government boards.
muvin, IAMIN World and Fyp are among startups that are working towards making kids financially literate.