Into the Dragon’s Den: Jinesh Vohra, founder of Sprive

I was recently watching Dragon’s Den (Shark Tank if you’re American), and spotted an interesting chap – Jinesh Vohra, founder of Sprive, a way of getting your mortgage paid down sooner through your spending. It’s an intriguing idea, so I reached out to him for a chat. Here’s what happened.

Chris Skinner: Tell me a bit about yourself, because I know that you have ended up being a Fintech startup founder, but you used to work for a major bank, and you’ve got a background in many different areas, so give me a bit of detail about where you come from.

Jinesh Vohra: I grew up in London, and started my career in investment banking after studying economics at the University of Warwick. At the bank, I was their intern graduate and ended up staying there for fourteen years, progressing through the ranks. I spent the first ten years supporting their security trading business, then moved over to their risk division and was responsible for about a third of the organisation globally, from an operational risk standpoint. And then I took the step to leave that corporate world and start Sprive.

Chris: And one of the things you learned as you went through that process is that some things in banking are broken, so you can fix them, but the one specific thing that you focused upon was the mortgage process.

Jinesh: That’s right. I wasn’t in mortgages, but I obviously had a mortgage, as many do. This means that I had the experience firsthand of the pain points of having a mortgage.

My wife and I bought our first home about thirteen years ago, and vividly remember seeing the mortgage offer document because it was saying that, for every one pound we borrow, we would pay 50 pence in interest, and we just didn’t really like the idea of paying 150,000 pounds in interest over the lifetime of the loan.

So, we went through a journey of trying to aggressively pay off our mortgage, and it became super apparent to me that lenders don’t build technology to help homeowners pay off their mortgages faster.

For the average homeowner, their mortgage is their largest household commitment, so I just felt there was a better way to help homeowners and built a solution that’s doing exactly that.

Chris: How did Sprive Start? And where have you got to? Because what you’re trying to do is enable people to pay their mortgage down early.

Jinesh: So, the mortgage market, from my own personal experience was, like I mentioned, a huge pain point. The way I saw the mortgage market is that most of the operators were either lenders or intermediaries, and the level of engagement is very transactional. Typically you only interact with your lender or your mortgage advisor when you’re looking to refinance, which is like every five years and, when I spoke to homeowners, they all felt the way I thought about it. All of them said that, in an ideal world, they would like to pay off their mortgage sooner. They would like to save and pay their lender less interest.

So, we started thinking about how we could build a platform that’s very focused on the core mission: to pay down the mortgage sooner.

What became super apparent to me as we went through the journey is that everyone shops, everyone spends and, if you could turn every shopping transaction into a mortgage overpayment, then that could be very powerful, and that’s what we do now.

You do your grocery shopping through the app. You buy a cup of coffee, your takeaway, your car insurance, your home insurance, anything in your life through Sprive and, for each transaction, you earn money towards your mortgage which you can send to your lender with just one tap.

This becomes hugely powerful.

We do other things as week like a spare cash feature. Apps like Money Box, Plum and Chip are auto saving apps that help you find spare cash to save and invest. We do that, but for helping people pay down their mortgages. We also help people find better mortgage deals.

So, Sprive is a holistic mortgage management app and it’s been doing really well. The last month, we’ve had over 175,000 people use our use our app. I would say that we are the fastest growing consumer mortgage FinTech in the UK. We’re helping more and more homeowners to save over £150 million in interest. There aren’t that many consumer businesses that can have that much of an impact on people’s lives.

We’re really proud of what we’re building, and this is just the beginning.

Chris: you made a decision to leave a good job in banking and create a startup. What was it that made you do that?

Jinesh: my dad was an entrepreneur. My grandfather was an entrepreneur.

To give you some context, my grandfather grew up in rural India with no education. At twelve years old he decided to leave India to go to East Africa and work in construction. Then, at the age of around thirty, he decided to start his own construction business, and it did relatively well.

That allowed my father to get a good education in India. He went to a boarding school, and then he came to the UK with literally £5 in his pocket and, again, he started his own business. That was what gave my brother and myself good foundations to then get to go to a good university and get a good job.

So, I’ve seen how, firsthand, entrepreneurship can lead to good financial outcomes. If they hadn’t taken those risks, my life would have turned out very different. And now I’ve got two young boys, and I want to show them that anything’s possible. I want to live up to my dad and my grandfather and what they’ve done.

This means that I was less motivated by money but could very clearly see that my life moving forward, if I stayed at Goldman Sachs, I would continue to work hard and get a good salary, but the upside is limited, whereas with entrepreneurship, the upside is unlimited.

This meant that I really believed in myself, and I always did.

When I was at Goldmans, I felt like if I backed myself, what could I achieve? And I had the idea, had the team and then looked and validated the idea. I really believed in what I was building. I felt like it was worth the risk and, so far, have no regrets because it’s going well.

Chris: So, you take that risk and what’s the experience been? How much time do you get with your kids and how much time do you have to dedicate to just being focused on getting the business to be successful?

Jinesh: Corporate life and Goldmans was not easy. I mean, they’re notorious for people working very, very long hours. It was very common for me to work 70 hour weeks and the hours are similar with having your own business but, if it is your business, you have a lot more control. This means that I can choose when I’m working and when I’m not working and, because of that, I am a lot more available.

I think if I was still at Goldman Sachs, I would be very much a weekend dad, whereas now I do pick up, I do drop offs. If they’ve got a concert, I can go and see them. If they’ve got a football match, I can be there.

So, I’m definitely seeing more of my children growing up, which is, which is nice, especially because they’re young. I have a lot more flexibility. I don’t have a boss where I have to get permission. I know what needs to be done, and I can do it in my own time. The intensity is very different, but I have a lot more control for sure.

Chris: And what are the main stresses that you feel in creating a startup business?

Jinesh: Obviously, funding is the critical area. You know, what are the things that you focus on? What’s the priorities? So, it varies as early on in the journey, the challenges were different to the challenges now. Early on, things were all about building a product that customers love, that is economically viable, and fundraising.

There was a time where, if you look over the last five years, there’s been a lot of consumer personal finance apps, which is the space that I am in, that have raised a lot of capital from investors, and they haven’t done very well. They haven’t returned on the investments or met the investors’ expectations. Then it becomes harder for founders like myself to get into the market because they’re like, well, these founders were amazing. They had a lot of capital, and they weren’t able to build economically viable, sustainable consumer personal finance apps. Why do you think you’ll be any different?

That’s a challenge and creates a friction and stress points that we’ve had to overcome.

The challenge now is around scaling, and how do we do that in a very economically viable way. We also have to do that in a way that continues to deliver value. As part of that, we have to make sure that we don’t trip up, because there have been other founders and other businesses that, during that scale up process, get things wrong, make bad decisions and ultimately implode.

I’ve worked too hard for that to happen with Sprive and so we have to stay very focused on making sure we make the right decisions as we go on this journey.

Chris: I stumbled over you because I was watching Dragon’s Den. Did that make a difference?

Jinesh: For sure. We were the most downloaded finance app in the UK on the back of Dragon’s Den, which I didn’t really expect. It’s something I’m very happy about as it’s not something that is easily achievable.  We were the sixth most downloaded app across all apps in the UK, post Dragon’s Den. It’s very rare.

I mean, I’ve been watching that show since I was 20. I never thought that there would be a day where I’d actually be on the show but, if you think about it, it’s a staple. Most people, even if they don’t watch it now, they’ve watched it in the past. It’s very rare that you can get your business in front of three to four million people over a 10 to 15 minute segment.

Then there is the amount of trust that’s associated with that program, especially because the dragons have been on TV for such a long time. If they say we believe in this business, and we’re going to back this business, for a lot of people watching at home, that’s huge.

We’ve definitely seen growth that is just incredible, and I don’t think it’s a temporary blip. I think we’re getting to new levels where we’re continuing to see sustained growth and momentum on the back of that, and much due to that initial kind of exposure. So, I was very grateful for the opportunity, and it’s been a life experience that I’ll never forget.

Chris: After the show, how actively are the dragons involved in your business?

Jinesh: The dragons have this mindset, once they invest, of if you need support then you can tell them what you need from them, how you need help, and then they will help you. If I need help from the Dragons, then obviously I need to ask. At the moment, we know what we’re focused upon. We’ve got a very clear strategy. It’s not something we need to engage them on.

Chris: You say you’ve got a very clear strategy, explain the strategy.

Jinesh: Priority number one is to get as many homeowners on our platform as possible. That is growing and helping more homeowners. I think that’s super important.

We are still very early in our journey. I think in the last month, we had about 175,000 homeowners that use the app, but there’s eleven million homeowners in the UK. That means our market share is very low today. That’s super important.

Then there is the shopping side of things.

We work with about 2,500 brands but again, currently, the focus is on the most used, top 100 brands, where most of our audience shop. There’s a huge amount of opportunity for us to get the customers to engage with those brands in a more meaningful way, and make our shopping experience the best in the industry.

We can do this with technology and, the way it’s moving and the kind of the competitive nature that brands face, I think there’s just more we can do to add value to both the brands and the customers itself. We can do that because, obviously, the more they shop, the more they save and that is super, super powerful.

We’re providing a savings product where the interest you earn on your savings can help you pay off your mortgage faster. That will be very interesting.  So, a little bit like what we’re doing with shopping, but with savings and then we’re really focusing on the refinancing side of things because we scan the market for better mortgage deals every day. We can help customers get better deals. There’s a lot more we can do to improve the customer experience in that space.

This means that our focus is very much on improving the product and growing our customer’s capabilities, and the core metric for us is helping homeowners save as much money on their mortgage as possible. This is our core. It is all about helping them get as much time back on their mortgage as possible because, if the customer finds increased value, then that is good for Sprive as well.

Chris: I’m still being stupid, but if I’m boiling it down to the basics, basically everything I spend gets rounded up, and the additional roundup goes to a payment to reduce my mortgage. Is that the basic thing?

Jinesh: No, not at all. I wouldn’t say that’s the core part of the app. The core part of the app is the shopping. You shop, you get cashback, and that cash back goes to your mortgage with one tap via the app. And different brands have different ways of how you can earn cashback.

It can vary but, if you do a shop at any supermarket and it comes to a 100 pound shop. Within seconds you get money into your Sprive account, which you can send to your lender with one tap. That’s the main thing.

We have someone shopping in our app every two seconds, which is super high engagement.

The secondary feature is the one you mentioned, Chris, which is you can do spare cash. And we don’t do roundups. We looked at roundups and a lot of our customers, who are typically between 30 and 45, and they would find it quite frustrating looking at their bank statement and seeing all these roundup transactions. They felt it was kind of hijacking their bank account, and so the most auto saves we’ll do for a customer is three in a month but, as always, it will be based on their spending.

We look at their rate of spending. We’ll ask the customer to just give us a minimum and a maximum. A customer might say, the minimum I can afford towards my mortgage as an overpayment is £1 and the maximum £25. Another customer might say the minimum I can afford is between £250 and £750. We work within those limits and so, for example, when it’s Christmas, most people spend a lot of money on presents and Christmas dinner. We’re more likely going to set aside money closer to your minimum than weeks and months where you’re saving and spending less.

To be clear, all of this is that the customer has complete control.

You can send all the money to your lender, or you can do a partial amount or if you need all the money back, it’s one tap and you get all your money back. That’s the secondary feature. The primary feature is the shopping.

Chris: when I’m spending, you’ve done deals with lots of companies and brands and, every time I spend with any of those companies, I get cash back, and that goes to my mortgage.

Jinesh: that’s it, yes. The aim is that you can make mortgage overpayments just by doing everyday shopping.

Chris: That’s much clearer. I’ll finish with asking about your vision of where you’re going?

Jinesh: The idea in my head is that there’s a billion people with some form of household debt. So, you know, we’re starting off with UK mortgages but there’s a lot of people that we can help and, if you look at the financial institutions around the world, a lot of them make money by getting people more and more into debt.

When I look at household debt numbers, it’s only going in one direction. There’s a lot of people that we can help, and there isn’t really anyone else being a consumer champion when it comes to helping people pay off their debts faster. That’s our mission: pay down your debt faster.