Fello

Fello is a Bengaluru-based consumer fintech company founded in 2021 and operated under the legal entity Fello Technologies Private Limited (also associated with the name 91GameFi Private Limited). Its original product was a game-based savings and investment application aimed at Gen-Z and young millennials in India: users invested in financial assets and earned gaming tokens for every rupee saved, which could be used to play daily and weekly in-house games with cash prizes, while their principal remained invested in low-risk instruments. The first version let users invest from ₹100 and receive a Tambola (bingo) ticket, with weekly number draws determining winners; invested balances grew in low-risk liquid funds yielding about 6% at the time.

The fello.in site today presents an investment app centred on 24K digital gold at 99.9% purity, 99.9% pure silver, a "Smart Saving" product that dynamically allocates between gold and silver, and fixed deposits advertised at up to 8.25% p.a. Investments are made through automated SIPs starting at ₹20, funded via UPI and UPI Autopay, with digital gold and silver supplied and vaulted by partner Augmont. The site states there are no platform charges, that 3% GST applies to gold and silver purchases, that SIPs can be paused or stopped at any time, and that gold and silver withdrawals are settled to a bank account typically within 48 hours. The company also publishes a personal-finance blog.

Y Combinator lists Fello as an Inactive company from its Winter 2022 batch with a team size of 24, and its founders as former founders.

Founding story

Founder Manish Maryada joined Entrepreneur First's Bengaluru cohort in 2020 intending to address financial literacy in India, initially considering a robo-advisory product. Over three months he ran a customer discovery process covering roughly 2,100 people (300+ phone calls, 50+ in-person conversations and 1,800+ form responses), which surfaced three findings: digital payments had been adopted partly because of gamified rewards such as scratch cards; investing knowledge spread through friends and family rather than institutional marketing; and about 70% of the 21-25 demographic was spending money on fantasy and casual gaming apps seeking financial rewards while roughly 60% lacked three months of savings. This led to the idea of wrapping savings products in a gaming experience. He partnered with Shourya Lala, a computer science engineer he met at Entrepreneur First, and began building Fello in 2021. Prior to Fello, Maryada was an early team member at the crypto exchange Koinex/KoinX, which scaled to about $265 million in daily trading volume before Indian regulatory restrictions in 2018, and later worked at Zaggle and FloBiz; he holds a master's degree in finance from Texas A&M University.

Business model

B2C. Consumer mobile application through which retail users in India invest small amounts on a recurring basis. In the original model, savings and investments were coupled with a rewards layer in which each rupee invested generated gaming tokens redeemable for games with cash prizes; user funds were placed in low-risk instruments such as liquid funds. The current site distributes third-party investment products — digital gold and silver sourced from Augmont and fixed deposits — via automated SIPs, and states that the app itself carries no user charges beyond statutory 3% GST on bullion purchases.

Publicly described revenue detail is limited; the app is stated to charge users no usage or withdrawal fees, with 3% GST on gold and silver purchases passed through per government regulation. Inc42 reports revenue of ₹1.3 Cr+ for FY24, up 70.24% over the prior fiscal year.

Traction

Fello reported onboarding 250,000 users within 12 weeks of launch, with 92% referred, 88% first-time investors and average daily in-app time above 12 minutes. Co-founder Shourya Lala's profile states Fello scaled to 2 million users and tens of millions in investments. A 2023 podcast write-up cites 750,000 Indians saving through the platform. The current website claims more than 1 million users. Inc42 lists FY24 revenue of ₹1.3 Cr+ and an employee count of 14.

Latest developments

The company's site markets 99.9% pure silver SIPs from ₹20 as a recent addition alongside digital gold, a dynamic gold/silver "Smart Saving" allocation product and fixed deposits, and cites more than 1 million users. Y Combinator lists the company as inactive with its founders shown as former founders; Shourya Lala is described as Founder and CTO of Third Chair.