How Manish Maryada (of Big Boss fame) gamified savings for GenZ with Fello
How Manish Maryada discovered the secret to making 750,000 Indians save money by letting them play games
The revelation came at 3 AM on a November night in 2020, as Manish Maryada hunched over his laptop in his cramped Bangalore apartment. Spreadsheets of customer interview data glowed on his screen, telling a story that would reshape his understanding of an entire generation's relationship with money. The numbers were stark: 70% of young Indians aged 21-25 were spending ₹500 daily on fantasy gaming platforms, chasing financial rewards. Yet 60% of these same people didn't have enough money saved for their next three months' expenses.
"They were glued towards fantasy and casual style gaming apps where they're spending 500 rupees per day to get financial rewards," Maryada would later reflect. The irony was inescapable, a generation willing to gamble hundreds of rupees daily for the chance of winning, but unwilling to put the same money into guaranteed growth through savings and investments.
That night, staring at data from 2,100 interviews conducted over three months, Maryada had his eureka moment. What if saving money could feel like playing a game?
This story emerged from a detailed conversation on the Founder Thesis podcast, hosted by Akshay Datt, where Maryada shared the complete journey of building Fello from idea to successful acquisition. The podcast provides unique insights into the challenges and breakthroughs of building India's first gamified fintech platform.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
The Foundation: From Crypto Crashes to Customer Obsession
Maryada's journey to this insight had been anything but linear. Three years earlier, he was one of the first employees at KoinX, India's pioneering cryptocurrency exchange, helping scale the platform to a staggering $265 million in daily trading volume. But by 2018, regulatory headwinds had effectively shut down the crypto ecosystem in India.
"It was almost like you're shutting your shops. We were in that situation where business was almost nothing. With that situation also we were able to run it. That solid crisis management experience comes into picture."
The KoinX experience taught Maryada two crucial lessons: first, how to build and scale fintech products in India's complex regulatory environment, and second, how to navigate existential crises with limited resources. These lessons would prove invaluable when building Fello.
After brief stints at Zaggle (building neo-banking products) and considering offers from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, Maryada joined Entrepreneur First's Bangalore cohort in 2020 with a simple mission: solve India's financial literacy problem. His initial instinct was to build a robo-advisory platform, riding the wave of automation sweeping through wealth management.
But Maryada was methodical about validation. Rather than assume he understood the problem, he embarked on what he calls "my only work for three months" - an exhaustive customer discovery process that would ultimately interview 2,100 people across India.
The Data That Changed Everything
The research methodology was deliberately comprehensive: 300+ actual phone calls, 50+ in-person conversations, and 1,800+ responses through Google forms. Maryada's framework was simple but rigorous:
"Out of 100 people whom you speak with, at least 40% of the people should be having this problem. Now, since these 40 people are telling there is a problem, it doesn't mean that that can turn out to be a business."
The data revealed three critical insights that would reshape his approach entirely:
First, the UPI Revelation: People had embraced digital payments specifically because of gamified rewards. Google Pay and PhonePe had succeeded not just through convenience, but through scratch cards and instant gratification mechanics.
Second, the Community Effect: When asked how they learned about investing, respondents consistently cited friends and family, "mutual fund sahi hai" recommendations spread through social networks, not institutional marketing.
Third, the Gaming Paradox: 70% of his target demographic was actively spending money on fantasy sports and casual gaming apps, seeking financial rewards through entertainment.
"Since they're expecting financial rewards, X goes to Y in finance, X is going to Y in gaming as well. It's only the front-end experience for them which is different."
This last insight was transformative. Instead of building another robo-advisor trying to educate users about complex financial products, what if he could wrap traditional banking infrastructure in a gaming experience?
Building the Minimum Viable Game
Armed with this insight, Maryada partnered with Shourya Lala, a computer science engineer he'd met at Entrepreneur First. Their complementary skills, Maryada's finance expertise and product strategy, Lala's technical development capabilities, would prove crucial for executing a concept as novel as gamified savings.
The first version of Fello was refreshingly simple. Users could invest as little as ₹100 and receive one Tambola (Bingo) ticket in return. Every week, the platform would draw 21 numbers, and matching 15 numbers would trigger a win. Whether users won or lost the game, their principal investment remained safe, growing in low-risk liquid funds that were yielding 6% returns at the time.
"People loved it. People loved the idea because on one hand, money was growing. On another, they're getting this gaming kick."
The proof-of-concept launch strategy was deliberately grassroots. Maryada and Lala posted on WhatsApp statuses, pushed friends to share, and distributed across LinkedIn and Facebook. The first 100 users came through personal networks, but what happened next surprised even them.
"The next 2,400, we don't even know how it came," Maryada recalls. "We are talking about fourth, fifth degree reference over here."
The viral coefficient was unprecedented: 92% of users in the first month came through organic referrals. By 3 AM, customer support tickets were flooding in as people invested "left, right, center." The product had achieved something rare in fintech, genuine word-of-mouth excitement around a savings product.
The Scale and Stumble Pattern
The initial traction caught the attention of investors. Within six months, Fello had raised $1 million from Entrepreneur First and notable angels including Bala Parthasarathy (MoneyTap CEO) and Ashneer Grover. But success bred ambition, and ambition led to complexity.
Version 2.0 of Fello launched in November 2021 with multiple games, more sophisticated reward mechanisms, and expanded investment options. The team had grown from 5 to 25 members. Everything seemed positioned for explosive growth.
Instead, the app crashed under user load. The rating plummeted from 4.0 to 1.1 on app stores. New users complained they couldn't understand the product. Existing customers threatened to leave.
"We were so scared. We literally face that. We were absolutely scared. We got such a great validation in version one. Why are we not able to replicate in version two?"
The problem wasn't technical, it was communicational. In trying to sound sophisticated for investors and media, the team had introduced complex terminology that confused their core user base.
"One of the things what founders do as a mistake is they try to use fancy nomenclature. Like fancy wordings in the application. Make your English level zero. Make sure that even a person at kindergarten level can understand it."
The recovery required radical simplification. They hired a freelance designer from Bangladesh, stripped out jargon, and rebuilt the user experience around clarity rather than sophistication. The fix worked, user adoption resumed, and retention metrics improved significantly.
The Y Combinator Validation
By early 2022, Fello's revised product was demonstrating strong unit economics. The platform had reached 750,000 registered users, with 98% being first-time savers and investors. The demographics were precisely aligned with Maryada's thesis: 85% of users were aged 21-25, the exact cohort that traditional financial institutions struggled to engage.
The organic growth remained impressive, 72% of users continued to arrive through referrals, suggesting genuine product-market fit rather than paid acquisition. Assets under management had reached $3 million (~₹24 crores), with ambitious targets to reach $50 million by year-end.
These metrics caught the attention of Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley accelerator that had backed companies like Airbnb and Stripe. Fello was accepted into the Winter 2022 batch, providing both validation and access to a network of investors who understood the intersection of gaming and financial services.
The Y Combinator experience also connected Fello with international precedents. In the United States, companies like Yotta Savings and Long Game had successfully implemented prize-linked savings products. Yotta, backed by Y Combinator, offered users lottery tickets for every $25 saved, with weekly drawings for prizes up to $10 million. The model was working globally, Maryada wasn't building in isolation.
The Business Model Innovation
One of Fello's most sophisticated innovations was how it managed the reward structure without destroying unit economics. Traditional loyalty programs fail because reward costs scale linearly with usage. But Maryada discovered a "trade secret" that allowed Fello to offer headline-grabbing prizes (up to ₹1 crore) while maintaining profitability.
"We have figured out a system in such a way that you know, like we don't pay that one crore. We have things in place and you know like an insurance... I don't want to sort of reveal anything about our thing but I'll sort of tell you very small chunk goes out."
The actual cash outlay for rewards was minimal, approximately ₹10,000 per week, treated as marketing expense. For larger prizes, the company had established insurance partnerships and probabilistic structures that guaranteed user excitement without threatening business sustainability.
The core revenue model remained straightforward: commission fees from investment products. With digital gold investments (which comprised 80% of volume), peer-to-peer lending products yielding 10% returns, and mutual fund offerings, Fello earned consistent percentages on a growing asset base.
By March 2024, annual revenue had reached ₹1.3 crores, with clear pathways to scale as the user base expanded and average investment amounts increased with user maturity.
Competitive Positioning in India's Fintech Boom
Fello operated in an increasingly crowded space, but with clear differentiation. Traditional investment platforms like Groww and Zerodha focused on sophisticated investors seeking low-cost trading. Newer entrants like Jar emphasized convenience through spare-change investing (automatically rounding up purchases and investing the difference).
"What JAR does is you need to set up auto pay and whenever you make a spending, say you spent 98 rupees, it rounds up to the nearest whole number which is 100, and the extra two rupees is saved in digital gold."
Fello's distinction was engagement rather than convenience. While Jar optimized for passive, unconscious saving, Fello deliberately gamified the experience to build active, enthusiastic participation in financial planning.
The broader market opportunity was substantial. India's investment tech sector was projected to reach $28 billion by 2025, growing at 44% CAGR. With 846 million internet users and 433 million mobile gaming users, the intersection of finance and gaming represented a massive, under-penetrated opportunity.
Fello also differentiated from international models. While Yotta Savings in the US focused purely on prize-linked savings accounts, Fello expanded into a broader financial services platform, offering multiple asset classes and positioning toward becoming a neo-bank for young Indians.
The Psychology of Financial Behavior Change
The success of Fello's model reflected deeper insights into behavioral psychology and habit formation. Traditional financial education approaches failed because they assumed rational decision-making. But Fello recognized that financial behavior is fundamentally emotional and social.
"Gaming is such an ecosystem which incentivises you, which has a community effect associated with it because gaming is a community driven activity and people are glued to it."
The gamification worked because it triggered multiple psychological drivers simultaneously:
Instant Gratification: Unlike traditional investments that provide feedback quarterly or annually, Fello offered immediate rewards through gaming mechanics.
Social Proof: The 72% referral rate indicated that users actively shared their experience, creating community-driven adoption.
Loss Aversion Mitigation: By guaranteeing principal protection while offering upside through games, Fello removed the primary psychological barrier to first-time investing.
Progressive Engagement: Users started with small amounts (₹100 minimums) and gradually increased investment as comfort and understanding grew.
This psychological approach proved particularly effective with Fello's core demographic. The 21-25 age group had grown up with mobile gaming, social media rewards, and instant digital feedback loops. Traditional financial products, with their emphasis on long-term thinking and delayed gratification, felt foreign by comparison.
Scaling Challenges and Team Dynamics
As Fello grew from 5 to 25 team members, Maryada confronted the universal challenges of scaling a startup. The company raised a $4 million Series A led by Courtside Ventures (a gaming-focused VC firm) with participation from notable angels including Kunal Shah (CRED founder) and Lalit Keshre (Groww co-founder).
But growth created new complexities. The team struggled with technical infrastructure as user numbers exploded beyond projections. Customer support became overwhelming. Most challengingly, co-founder dynamics strained under the pressure of rapid scaling and investor expectations.
"It'll be super unfair for me if I don't tell you between version one and version two, we launched and it slunged massively, slung so massively that we were scared."
Maryada's transparency about these challenges offers valuable lessons for other founders. Rather than presenting a sanitized success story, he acknowledges the emotional toll of building a high-growth startup:
"You might be spending more time with him [co-founder] than your partner in real life. So that is where personal synergies becomes very important."
The solution involved systematic approaches to conflict resolution, clearer role definitions, and bringing in experienced advisors who had navigated similar scaling challenges. The investor base, particularly the Y Combinator network, provided crucial support during these periods.
The Acquisition and What It Means
In 2024, Fello was acquired by an undisclosed fintech company, providing a successful exit for Maryada and validating the gamified savings model in India's market. While financial details weren't disclosed, the acquisition represented a significant outcome for a company that had started with customer interviews just four years earlier.
For Maryada personally, the exit provided validation beyond financial returns. His inclusion in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2024 recognized his contribution to democratizing financial access for young Indians. The achievement was particularly meaningful given his journey from a small-town engineering student to building and successfully exiting a venture-backed fintech company.
"During this journey of building a business, I was fortunate to be listed in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. Fello was eventually acquired by another leading business, after which I exited the company."
The acquisition also validated broader trends in Indian fintech. As regulatory frameworks matured and user behavior shifted toward digital-first financial services, innovative models like gamification became attractive to larger players seeking to engage younger demographics.
Lessons for the Next Generation
Maryada's journey from crypto exchange employee to successful fintech founder offers several crucial insights for entrepreneurs building in India's evolving financial services landscape:
Customer Discovery Is Non-Negotiable: The 2,100 interviews that revealed the gaming insight weren't just validation, they were the foundation of the entire business model. Without this systematic approach to understanding user behavior, Fello would have remained another failed robo-advisor.
Simplicity Scales, Complexity Breaks: The near-catastrophic failure of Version 2.0 demonstrated that sophisticated products can alienate core users. The most successful fintech products in India prioritize clarity and ease-of-use over feature richness.
Behavioral Psychology Trumps Financial Education: Rather than trying to educate users about the importance of saving, Fello worked with existing behaviors (gaming) to create new outcomes (investing). This approach proved far more effective than traditional financial literacy campaigns.
Regulatory Resilience Requires Experience: Maryada's experience navigating crypto regulations at Koinex provided crucial preparation for building a compliant gamified financial product. Understanding regulatory nuances early can be the difference between sustainable growth and forced shutdown.
Unit Economics Must Work Without Venture Scale: Despite raising $5+ million, Fello maintained discipline around reward costs and customer acquisition. The business model worked at small scale and could profitably serve the market without requiring massive venture returns.
The Broader Implications
Fello's success represents more than just one startup's journey, it signals a fundamental shift in how financial services can engage India's massive young population. With 98% of users being first-time investors, the platform demonstrated that barriers to financial inclusion weren't primarily about access or affordability, but about engagement and user experience.
The gamification model also suggests new possibilities for habit formation around financial wellness. Just as fitness apps use streaks, achievements, and social features to encourage exercise, financial products can leverage similar mechanics to build positive money management behaviors.
Looking ahead, the intersection of gaming, social features, and financial services represents a significant opportunity for both startups and established institutions. As Maryada noted in his investor conversations:
"We want to celebrate healthy banking and healthy finances and healthy savings for the 21 to 25 old Gen Z and young millennials."
This mission, making financial wellness celebratory rather than obligatory, may be the key to unlocking India's next wave of financial inclusion.
For Maryada, now working on his next venture, the Fello experience provided both vindication and preparation. He had proven that innovative product design could change user behavior at scale, that Indian consumers would embrace new models when properly executed, and that successful exits were possible for founders willing to combine deep customer insight with disciplined execution.
The revolution he started with that 3 AM data revelation has only just begun. As India's 433 million mobile gaming users increasingly intersect with the country's expanding fintech ecosystem, the future belongs to founders who understand that the most powerful financial products don't just move money, they move people.
Manish Maryada's complete journey from customer interviews to successful exit was featured in detail on the Founder Thesis podcast, hosted by Akshay Datt. The podcast provides an in-depth exploration of building gamified fintech products in India's evolving regulatory environment.
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