Oppo forays into financial services with mutual funds, Freedom SIP

With an end-to-end solution for the growing financial needs of the new age consumers, Oppo is the latest Chinese smartphone manufacturer to venture into financial services in India. Under Oppo Kash, the company plans to introduce six offerings over the next 18 months. These include payments, lending, savings, insurance, financial education, and a financial well-being score. Oppo Kash caters to the growing financial needs of individuals and SMEs that have been conventionally deemed as a risky segment for organised lending, perhaps due to a lack of credit history.

"Oppo Kash is our end-to-end financial services solution. It comes under 'Make for India' initiative where we have now poured into developing local services for Indian consumers. Now as you can see the market currently, consumers have to go to various places as far as savings, borrowings, insurance are concerned. We have tried to consolidate all of these financial services under one umbrella and made a consolidated service for Indian consumers as Oppo Kash. Within these pillars, as far as saving is concerned, we have disrupted by introducing the first platform brand to put visual fund platform on the go on the smartphone. We have also gone ahead and created a unique offering in terms of SIP where you can invest as low as Rs 100," explained Sumit Walia, VP - Product & Marketing at Oppo.

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While the payment offer is yet to be rolled out, mutual funds and Freedom SIP will be offered under savings. The borrowing segment comprises personal loans up to Rs 2 lakh and business loans up to Rs 2 crore. Under insurance, Oppo users can get their mobile screens insured. For financial education, Oppo will offer free credit reports thrice in a year for financial inclusion. In the beta release, 5 products have been launched with Freedom SIP as a unique offer. With Freedom SIP, users can commence their mutual fund investments journey with as low as Rs 100 worth of investment and become future-ready.

"For a business loan, we have tied up with Lendingkart, and Early Salary is our partner on the personal loan side. On the insurance side, we have done a strategic partnership with ICICI Lombard for us to be able to give mobile screen insurance and digitise the whole experience. We are going to create the holistic ecosystem of Oppo which goes into hardware and services, and we will create loyalty and stickiness among our consumers and give them a reason to stay in the ecosystem for a repeated number of times," added Walia.

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Oppo Kash will be pre-installed in all Oppo smartphones and will be available for download on Google Play Store as well. The Oppo team is piloting a physical acquisition model leveraging the smartphone sales team in Oppo stores to cross-sell financial products. The pilot will run in select stores in select Tier 1, 2, and 3 cities for 6 months after which an all India rollout will be done. Oppo has also set up a customer service team that would help users invest in mutual funds, take loans or solve any other queries. Trained in multiple Indian languages, the customer servicing team will be instrumental in making Oppo Kash a household name in India in times to come.

"We plan to offer a one-stop solution for all financial services on the phone. All financial needs should be fulfilled when a user has an Oppo phone within few clicks and with a simple, mobile-first experience. We are offering our services with the best partners in the industry and look forward to enabling 10million dreams," said Zafar Imam - Lead, Oppo Kash.

Oppo aims to have 10 million consumers in the next 5 years on the platform having used either of their financial services worth Rs 50,000 crore.

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