With FINMANIA, students will be motivated to develop a very important life skill: Mukund Rao
Ahead of FINMANIA, India’s largest finance Olympiad for students, Mukund Rao, the co-founder of muvin, shares his insight about the importance of making young India financially aware. Additionally, he also offers an overview of the upcoming competition and encourages students across Pan-India to participate in the same. He highlights that improving one’s financial literacy quotient is one of the major life skills in today’s times.
Tell us about the idea behind FINMANIA Olympiad. How it came into existence?
FINMANIA was conceived as a platform to help school students in India improve their financial literacy quotient. While there’s a lot of content available for free on the internet, much of it is designed for adults and is in long form; thus, making it un-engaging for students. Furthermore, students want relatable content that talks to them in their language in a fun and immersive manner. And last but not the least, today’s youngsters like to compete with their peers while having a gamified experience that makes learning both entertaining and rewarding.
Keeping these points in mind, we at muvin have launched FINMANIA as India’s Largest Finance Olympiad that encourages students of classes 7th to 12th to not only compete with each other and test their financial knowledge, but also consume curated content and practise quizzes on the app to help them prepare for the Olympiad. We hope that with FINMANIA, these students will be motivated and incentivized to embark on their financial awareness journey and develop a very important life skill.
If these students someday take these learnings and start their own wealth creation from a young age, then we at muvin would be delighted to have played an important part in their journey to financial independence.
What is digital financial literacy all about? How important is it for Indian youngsters?
Financial literacy is a vast and expansive domain. More than understanding complex terms and concepts like derivatives, Futures & Options, etc., it is imperative that we all start by understanding the very basics such as inflation, compounding, among others. Typically, students either enter adulthood with little or half-baked knowledge of finance. With the various financial products available today, they often get overwhelmed and sometimes don’t understand the product they have been sold.
Furthermore, with the proliferation of various apps, youngsters should be aware of the various ways in which one can conduct transactions securely on these apps and not be subject to frauds and scams. This risk combined with mis-selling of financial products can leave a youngster as vulnerable, which can result in unpleasant outcomes.
Financial Literacy at its basic level should help consumers be in a position to perform transactions securely, not fall prey to cybercrimes. Hence, the objective is to help them understand financial products including the fine print so as to not be a victim of mis-selling.
How will FINMANIA Olympiad help the young participants?
FINMANIA – India’s largest financial Olympiad – was launched with the aim to introduce children into the world of financial literacy through an engaging and gamified platform. While children can consume content freely available on video platforms, often they do so without fully understanding the topic or start trying to learn advanced topics without gaining a foundational understanding of the world of money and finance.
Keeping this in mind, FINMANIA is being conducted specifically for youngsters of classes 7th to 12th who are further split into 3 cohorts – 7th and 8th standard, 9th and 10th standard and 11th and 12th standard.
FINMANIA has been set up to hand hold children through the domain of financial literacy by curating topics that are relevant to their age groups, and that are important to set the foundation for further enhancing their financial literacy quotient. For example, a child in 7th or 8th standard is introduced to the topic of “Needs vs Wants”. This in turn opens their minds to the world of budget and expense management. Likewise, all the learning modules in each cohort are customized for their learning needs.
Each learning module within FINMANIA is a combination of an engaging short-form animated video, a mini article and some other materials that we have hand-picked from various sources available on the internet. Children are rewarded for completing learning modules and can also check if they have understood the module by taking a very short quiz.
Once they have completed the learning modules, they can take practise quizzes that are timed and have questions of varying degrees of difficulty. At any point, children can go back and watch any of the learning videos or read the article to make sure they have understood the concept and retake the quiz.
The consumption of the learning content and the practice quizzes will help the child to be ready to take the qualification quiz that muvin is conducting physically at certain schools across India and also via the muvin app Pan-India. muvin will shortlist the highest scorers for the zonal round from where we will select the contenders for the all-India finals.
At each stage, children are rewarded via the muvin app and also get participation certificates. A total prize money pool of INR 10 lakhs is up for grabs across all the 3 cohorts.
We believe that by gamifying learning, we will create a competitive environment, in turn driving participation and also inspiring children on their path to being financially aware.
How was the muvin app conceived?
muvin was conceived as an experiential financial literacy app. Based on current regulatory guidelines, minors in India today can’t open a digital wallet or get an add-on card from their parents. This leaves the students with the only option of a minor account to commence hands-on introduction to money management.
Usually, the starting point for a student’s journey into finance is when their parents start giving them pocket money to help make some ad-hoc purchases at a neighbourhood store or for basic entertainment. These purchases are usually done via cash. Alternatively, with the rise of e-commerce apps, youngsters typically use their parents credit/debit card or their UPI apps to make purchases.
muvin was introduced to help solve the problem wherein youngsters are no longer dependent on their parents for micro purchases. With muvin, parents can load their child’s digital wallet, thus allowing children to spend at online / offline stores using the muvin Card that is linked to the wallet. Furthermore, the app features in-built security features to help parents set spending limits, block cards in case of loss, and monitor transactions.
With muvin, students can be one step forward in their journey towards financial awareness by both doing and learning. To supplement this hands-on learning, the app also features a host of bite-sized learning content that helps students to further increase their financial literacy quotient. Students are also rewarded for their usage of the platform through an exciting points-based rewards system.
How important is the role of parents for a kid’s financial literacy?
A kid’s journey into financial literacy starts at home with parents as their teachers. A simple act of giving cash to your kid to buy candy from the neighbouring store and then asking the child to count the changes and make sure it is correct is the starting point. Small teachings such as the various denominations of the Indian rupee, a piggy bank for the child to save the changes and a game of monopoly are all great beginning points for parents to induct their children into the world of money management.
As the child grows, he would naturally be exposed to finance through articles in the news, from their friends and also by learning concepts such as simple and compound interest in school. It is important for parents to continue to enhance their child’s knowledge by discussing with them aspects like budgeting, needs vs wants, the concept of tax, etc.
To supplement this theoretical learning, parents can also get their children their first debit or prepaid card or their first savings account. This helps children to practise concepts like saving, budgeting and monitoring their monthly spend.
Once the base foundation is provided, children should be encouraged to widen their financial literacy quotient by consuming the vast amounts of content available on channels such as YouTube or download apps such as muvin, which apart from providing children their first prepaid card, also provides a vast library of gamified financial education content that has been curated for their age group.
How safe is the online financial market for youngsters? What are the dos and don’ts in this regard?
Online financial transactions are inherently safe due to the various guidelines laid down by regulatory bodies. Having said that, one must be aware of various ways to keep themselves safe. not sharing their usernames or passwords to internet banking websites, not sharing their UPI ID and PIN, not approving UPI collect requests from unknown parties, avoiding sharing card details and most importantly the CVV number or OTP received during online transactions are some of the measures to be taken.
No authorized bank personnel or employees will ever ask anyone for the above details. The moment one receives any call asking for any of the above details, they should immediately disconnect the call and take note of the incoming number and block such numbers on their phone.
Almost all bank websites and apps allow users to set limits per transaction and spend daily. They also allow the users to disable international transactions and enable / disable online or offline transactions. First time users of mobile banking apps should set low limits till they get comfortable using it.
Recently, there are also a number of apps that offer personal loans to users. Many of these apps will request access to a user’s contact database, SMS messages, etc. Users should be aware that the app can access this data ONLY IF the user authorizes it. Any app that accesses this data without user consent should be reported immediately to either Google or Apple.
In the unfortunate event someone is a victim of fraud, then they should immediately report the transaction to the bank and initiate a dispute process. Furthermore, the consumer always has the right to report the specific fraud to the cybercrime cell via their web portal. The cybercrime base usually picks up the case within a few days and investigates the same with the respective financial entities who were involved in the transaction, to try and resolve the same.
Even in the offline world, one must be careful while using their card or wearable device. Many cards and wearables are NFC enabled which allows for tap-n-go transaction. In case one is uncomfortable with tap-n-go then they should disable the same. They can also use the transaction limit features
The above while not exhaustive, it does give a quick glimpse into the most important points that one has to keep in mind while conducing transactions online.
What does the future for muvin look like?
At muvin we have embarked on a mission to make young India financially literate and over the next few years, we strive to touch a million students across the country. This is a journey that will require both time and effort. Unlike other academic ventures where there’s a certain measurable outcome such as a grade system, financial literacy is a life skill that doesn’t have a tangible or immediate gratification. The full benefits of being financially literate starts being visible when one reaches adulthood.
Hence, in order to tackle this challenge of a long gestation period between effort and return, we at muvin are constantly in pursuit of new and engaging ways in which we can make financial literacy both fun and engaging and also with some immediate tangible outcomes. We are constantly rolling out new features and content within the app in the endeavour that with each new update, the app becomes even more interesting than before.
We have a very clear mission of being India’s largest financial literacy destination and we will continue to roll out initiatives such as FINMANIA so as to play a small part in the quest to raise India’s standing in the global financial literacy rankings. The challenge is by no means trivial, but we all at muvin including our partners, employees, customers and investors welcome this challenge head-on.