This Mumbai-based startup connects teenagers with freelance opportunities, helping them earn, gain skills

Financial literacy, most importantly, among teenagers is crucial to build a foundation for smart relation with money and avoid poor financial decisions in future. As Indian education system does not cover matters around personal finance, Indian startups have come forward to bridge the gap. In the process of making teenagers financially literate, youngsters are achieving financial stability through freelancing. Bridging the connect between companies and teenagers is Mumbai-based SaaS platform Funngro, a startup that bagged funding from investors on Shark Tank. A HEN member and Founder of Funngro, Payal Jain speaks to Bizz Buzz about the importance of creating financial literate teenagers in India

After over two decades in the IT world, what led you to launch a platform for teenagers?

During my stint with a payment gateway company my role was to manage various customers like Flipkart, Myntra and many others. While analysing their data I realised that many teenagers were into spending only. There are many avenues to spend money, which includes food, ecommerce, and travelling. The data was suggesting that these teenagers do not hold a bank account, they do not know anything about money, whereas only at the end of the month, parents realise the amount spent by their teenage child. This made me thinking that because of the exposure people have they know, where to spend money but have no idea about commitment. Initially when I launched Funngro as a fintech in 2021, the feature included a parent assigning a task to their child, which will earn them a reward in the form of money after the task is completed. They were given a Funngro card with Rupay as network. The whole idea was to make children aware of how money is earned through commitment.

What did your communication with these teenagers reveal?

Our teenage customers put forward their opinion of not wanting to receive money from parents, instead they wanted to earn for real. While a 10 or 11 year old will agree to work for parents, the teenagers would not. During this period, I was building Funngro platform and wanted hands to complete certain tasks. Social media managers in the market were charging hefty price followed by hassles to get the work done. I wanted people to create our explanatory video. I realised that I know tech savvy youngsters in the age group of 14 and above, let me ask them if they can take up these work. As they have access to technology they performed the given job as expected.

How open are companies allocating work to teenagers?

Outside the app I did a POC and asked around 500 people what their skills are, and then I went ahead matching them with companies for freelance work. This took off very well. Companies were satisfied with the teenager’s commitment and work; moreover teenagers were excited about earning for real, and getting real exposure of working with companies. We have 3,500 companies on our platform looking out to get work done. Every committed user is getting paid nearly Rs 5,000 per project, and till now two lakh teenlancers have already earned through Funngro. We have completed four lakh projects from last August.

How has Funngro helped spending masters evolve into smart earners?

The initial learnings these teenagers took away was how to represent themselves, and how to sell their skill, this has also made them job ready. I have 10 youngsters in my customer support team who are managing live support, checking projects on our behalf. A 20-year-old is our business development manager. They are not only working for us but also for other companies too. Nearly 150 companies have got their website created, then there is other project works assigned such as content writing, graphic design, voice over among others. So, Funngro has made able for skilled and unskilled youth to earn through the range of companies we have on our platform.

What is the difference seen in demand for projects from younsters in cities as against in small towns?

Our main presence is in tier-2, 3 cities only. Out of 30 lakh teenlancer users we have, more than 60 per cent come from small cities. Youngsters who are really excited about earning are those who are sitting in Jammu, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh. We have users from all over India. Metro city’s teenagers have different requirement, they want to build profile through company projects only. Youngsters from small cities are excited to earn money even from small activities. We are empowering them not only with money but also by exposing them to various domains. These teenlancers take up projects related to gaming, fintech, edtech, lead generation or survey.

How have Funngro users benefited in terms of earnings?

There is a user named Srinath from Telangana, he has earned Rs 1.50 lakh through Funngro, a girl named Jahnavi has earned more than Rs 60,000. In Hyderabad alone we have more than 50,000 freelancers in the age group of 17 to 22. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh put together the numbers are higher. There is an influencer here, Sai Nithin, he posted for us on social media, which led Funngro get lot of traction in these two States. Infact for our live support we wanted a Telugu speaking person to explain our projects so that the users could have the mechanism of changing the user language to Telugu. What I have noticed is Hyderabad freelancers are sincere. A Company wanted content to be written, two to three teenlancers performed really well, moreover they brought in another 30 users.

Is your gift card feature for teenagers yet live?

For 13 and below, the task manager is there but we have removed the card facility which was a prepaid instrument. There were other startups which raised millions in funding to run this gift card business but they weren’t successful. So we have also pivoted from that offering. Now we are an experiential learning platform, but it is hard to pin it down under giftech, edtech, or fintech. The whole idea was to create financial literacy for teenagers and the youngsters. We had introduced learning modules too, but right now we are concentrating only on one category, as we realised that we have to focus on one offering to succeed. Soon, we will be coming up with curriculum for e-sports enthusiasts as many youngsters in tier-2 and 3 cities are good at gaming. This learning module will help them forward their hobby into career.

You have been enhancing the platform constantly. What are the learnings that led you to do so?

When I went on Shark Tank we were only 40,000 users. In January 2023 our app became viral, it gained traction, and today we have 30 lakh freelancers/users or downloads of our mobile app. Initially we started off by getting teenagers freelance work, but we realised the user will not return if they are not able to find work. So, I added another category which includes gaming, campaign survey, social media marketing, social media campaigns, pre launch activities, and so on which will lead the customer to come back to the platform on a daily basis. We also enhanced the mobile app and integrated various algorithms to rate the performance of teenlancers.

Any new tech feature lined-up or plans of entering new geographies…

Right now our focus is on building Funngro as the one-stop solution for all the teenagers to earn and learn. We have received offers from Companies in the US and South Africa to launch operations over there. But, we are very clear that India market is very big, and our focus is to further strengthen our presence here over the next one year. Once this has been achieved we will venture into learning, and providing guidance to students. We will keep on working on enhancing our product. Every week we have a release such as, currently the World Cup fever is on, so we are running a contest around it. Product is our key and our aim is to be a company with less than 30 employees, while every work should be automated. A Company posts a campaign, teenagers take up the work, complete it and submit the campaign, the results are generated, and they are marked approved or rejected. We want to further improve our algorithm so that an user gets real feedback of the work submitted.

What is Funngro’s revenue model? The target you are aiming to achieve over the next few years…

We earn commission from Companies, and based on the project the percentage varies. Our revenue is growing at 25 per cent month-on-month. We are already profitable, and we have earned nearly Rs 3 crore in the last three months. Initially we were bootstrapped then I roped in my husband as we had enough money to survive. We did not want to raise funds as it was not like we wanted to be a unicorn in the next three years. We want to build a sustainable model first. We have raised total investment of Rs 2 crore, went into building/upgrading the SaaS platform. We participated in Shark Tank mainly for the guidance and mentorship. Our target is to onboard 20 lakh teenlancers by March 2025. Till we reach the autopilot mode we will be in India, and post 2025 we will look at entering new geographies.