KapitalWise

KapitalWise helps banks and other financial companies better serve their customers.

Powered by machine learning, the company’s customer relationship management platform analyzes consumer data. This includes their credit history, cash flow, and milestone life events. Banks can use this data to effectively engage with their customers and recommend appropriate products and services.

KapitalWise was created by Founder Sajil Koroth. Koroth has more than 15 years of experience in the financial product development, data science, and machine learning markets.

This company is a graduate of the Barclays Accelerator, an award-winning program affiliated with Techstars. This program offers mentoring and capital to startups in the financial technology, or “Fintech,” market.

Furthermore, KapitalWise has begun pilot programs with notable customers including:

• ABSA, one of the five largest banks in South Africa.

• One of the 10 largest banks in the UK.

• And a top-three U.S. bank in terms of market cap. KapitalWise has signed non-disclosure agreements with the last two pilot customers while they test the company’s platform.

KapitalWise is raising funds to continue its pilot programs, add new product features, and increase its sales/marketing efforts.

This company is targeting the $48 billion customer relationship management (CRM) market.

Within this market, financial services companies are increasingly using CRM tools to attract and retain customers. Banks, for example, use CRM tools to create more personalized experiences.

KapitalWise’s platform helps banks create these experiences. Here’s how it works:

Machine learning algorithms use proprietary learning and prediction models to analyze three different types of data:

• First-party bank data: This includes call center, bill payment, and customer profile data.

• Open web data: This includes social media and census information.

• Third-party data: Historic financial information such as credit scores and reports.

Using this data, the platform detects a customer’s financial characteristics and preferences. Banks can then help customers achieve financial goals and up-sell appropriate products and services.

KapitalWise offers two different platforms: one for retail customers and one for small business customers.

The retail platform detects and predicts more than 60 personal, financial, and credit-centric events. Banks are notified as these events occur and the platform provides recommendations of products and services that may be useful. Events include marriage, starting a new job, going on vacation, or buying a new home or car.

Banks review this information on a dashboard that can integrate into their existing CRM systems. The dashboard tracks consumer engagements, displays return on investment metrics, and makes projections. It also provides pre-designed marketing templates, enabling banks to build marketing campaigns quickly.

The company’s small business platform detects and predicts more than 30 small business actions, such as increasing office space or hiring new staff.

Banks are notified when a client is looking to expand his business, or sell it. Similar to the retail platform, banks rely on a dashboard to track customer engagement and return on investment metrics.

In addition to these platforms, KapitalWise is developing customer-facing tools for banks to offer. These include money management, micro-savings, and robo-advisory tools.

To generate revenue, KapitalWise uses volume-based pricing. It charges between $1.80 and $3.00 per account per year, plus an additional fee if banks want to access FICO scores. This fee is an additional $1.50 per year per account.

Furthermore, KapitalWise charges an installation fee for onsite installations, which typically range from $150,000 to $300,000, depending on the size of the client.

In addition to the Barclays Accelerator, KapitalWise has participated in the Holt Accelerator, ICBA ThinkTech, and the FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific.

The company began generating revenue in 2017. In 2018, it generated $30,800 in revenue, and last year it brought in $79,000.

In 2020, KapitalWise aims to release several new features for its platforms. These include:

• CRM lead generation tool: This will integrate KapitalWise’s data analysis into banks’ internal CRM systems, enabling bank managers to autogenerate leads for up-selling products.

• Consumer “taste profile”: This will analyze a consumer’s spending habits, helping banks build personalized profiles based on the types of restaurants they like to visit or online purchases they make.

• Contextual plugins: This will enable KapitalWise’s platform to analyze data about a customer's travel habits. (For example, do they go on vacation every year? Do they travel each month for business?)

• FinTech marketplace: Some banks in the company’s target market aren’t full-service banks. There may be an opportunity for KapitalWise to offer products such as unsecured loans, insurance, and wealth solutions for these customers and share the revenue earned.

Team Background

Paul Stamoulis - Chairman of the Board

In addition to his role with KapitalWise, Paul is Managing Partner of Clarim Holdings. This private holding company manages businesses in the media, communications, and talent industries.

He was Managing Director of Scotiabank Global Banking, where he was responsible for managing a team of 75 employees. He worked at this company for 10 years, also serving as Managing Director of the company’s Credit Capital Markets Division and Risk Solutions Group.

Paul spent four years as Director of Corporate Derivative Products with TD Securities, a global financial services company.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from St. Anselm College and an MBA from Harvard.

Sajil Koroth - Founder & CEO

Sajil has more than 15 years of experience in areas including financial product development, data science, and machine learning.

Prior to starting KapitalWise, he was Vice President of Technology for Markit, an information services company catering to the financial industry. While there, he also led the company’s Index Management service, responsible for providing data on Credit Default Swap pricing for financial traders.

Before that, he was a software architect for ICAP, a financial services company focused on risk management.

Earlier in his career, Sajil was a senior engineer for TSYS, a company providing electronic payment services to financial institutions. While there, he led a team that invented the company’s patented mobile payment platform.

He began his career as a software engineer for Siebel Systems, a software company that was acquired by Oracle in 2005 for $5.8 billion.

Sajil holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Calicut and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Madrasas.

Co-Investors