Multipl Pioneers Spendvesting Revolution: Transforming How India Spends and Invests

"We get people to invest for their spends instead of spending on credit." This simple but revolutionary idea from Paddy Raghavan, Co-founder of Multipl, represents a fundamental reimagining of how Indians approach consumption and wealth creation. Instead of the debt trap of "buy now, pay later" or the meager returns of savings accounts, Multipl's spendvesting platform enables users to invest for their lifestyle goals and earn both mutual fund returns and brand discounts—delivering 20-21% value compared to 3% from traditional savings.

The timing couldn't be more critical. When COVID hit and millions lost their jobs, those who had funded their lifestyles through credit and loans found themselves in devastating financial holes that took years to escape. Meanwhile, Indians were increasingly participating in markets and showing greater risk appetite—but primarily for long-term savings. Raghavan and his team identified the gap: what if people could invest for their consumption needs instead of borrowing for them?

This wasn't just another fintech app—it was a category-creating platform that fundamentally rethinks the relationship between spending and investing.

The Founder's Journey: From Cloud Infrastructure to Fintech Innovation

Raghavan's path to founding Multipl reads like a testament to serial entrepreneurship and technical excellence. His background is deeply rooted in technology and product management. "I've been like a tech guy, product person all along," Raghavan explains. "Something that I enjoy doing is building things, creating products which are probably not there—not just a copycat version of something that is working in the west but really creating products."

Before Multipl, Raghavan founded CMPUTE.IO, an enterprise cloud startup that became part of The Alchemist accelerator in the Bay Area. For four to five years, he split his time between Bangalore and Silicon Valley, building cloud infrastructure solutions before the company was eventually acquired by Cisco.

Prior to his entrepreneurial journey, Raghavan worked at EMC data storage systems in product management in Bangalore, where he was exposed to cloud technology early on. This experience gave him the foundation to identify opportunities in the cloud space and eventually launch his first venture.

The Motivation: Breaking the Identity Crisis

When asked about what drove him to entrepreneurship, Raghavan offers refreshingly honest perspective. "I mean, nothing fancy. I just, you know, a classic middle-class guy, just ambitious, wanting to do something big, something nice."

But deeper than ambition was a desire to differentiate himself from the crowd around him. "I felt entrepreneurship is the way to break out from the identity crisis sort of I was having because everyone around me was doing the same stuff. Is that something that I can do differently and also break out?"

This desire to build something different—not just copy Western models but create genuinely new products—has been the through-line in Raghavan's career. From cloud infrastructure to spendvesting, he's consistently focused on category creation over imitation.

The Problem: The Credit Consumption Trap

The genesis of Multipl emerged from observing two contradictory behaviors in Indians' relationship with money. On one hand, more people were investing than ever before, participating in markets, and showing greater risk appetite. On the other hand, consumption was increasingly being driven through credit—payday loans, EMI schemes, and "buy now, pay later" options.

"This was the time when COVID happened and we saw a lot of payday loans—people had been taking loans for consumption like iPhone or for travel," Raghavan explains. "And then people lost jobs and that really hurt them. It took them two years to get back because they are currently on debt and they don't have a job."

The COVID crisis exposed the fragility of debt-fueled consumption. People who had lost jobs found themselves trapped in debt that took one to two years to recover from—setbacks that could have been avoided with a different approach to consumption financing.

The Limitations of Traditional Solutions

Raghavan and his co-founders recognized that they couldn't simply preach financial prudence. "We can't be preachy. We can't go to folks and say hey, you should not have your iPhone, why do you want an iPhone, why do you want a car, why do you want to travel. That is not something that we would want to do, and that's not going to make sense to anyone."

The question became: how do you help people achieve their aspirations and live their desired lifestyle without pushing them into debt traps? The answer lay in connecting two behaviors that were already happening—investing and spending—but through a fundamentally different mechanism.

The Solution: Spendvesting—Invest for Your Spends

Multipl's solution elegantly bridges investing and spending through a concept they call spendvesting. Instead of borrowing for consumption, users invest for their planned expenses. The platform enables them to earn two types of returns: mutual fund returns from the market and discounts from partner brands when they actually spend.

"We are just connecting spending and investing through this concept called spendvesting where we get people to invest for their spends," Raghavan explains. "They get returns from Mutual Funds, but they also get discounts from Brands when they are actually spending with the brand."

The example Raghavan gives is compelling: imagine you're planning travel six months later. You start investing for it through Multipl. You earn returns from mutual funds during those six months. When you're ready to book, you also get a discount from partner brands like MakeMyTrip. As a consumer, you get both the returns and the discount—together delivering 20-21% value compared to 3% if you kept the money in a savings account.

Beyond Travel: Comprehensive Needs, Wants, and Savings

While travel serves as an intuitive example, Multipl's platform spans the full spectrum of personal finance using the widely accepted 50-30-20 budgeting principle: 50% of income goes to needs, 30% to wants, and 20% to savings.

"Needs would include anything to do with your EMIs, your rent, insurance premiums, car insurance, health insurance, school fees for kids, groceries," Raghavan explains. "Wants is about travel, shopping, jewelry purchase, anniversary gifting, birthday gifting."

Multipl supports spendvesting across all three categories:

• Needs: Car insurance premiums, health insurance premiums, school fees, groceries, rent, EMIs
• Wants: Holiday travel, shopping, jewelry purchases, anniversary gifts, birthday gifts
• Savings: Retirement planning, long-term wealth creation

This comprehensive approach means Multipl isn't restricted to luxury consumers or frequent travelers. It's relevant for anyone with income who has planned or unplanned expenses across any category of spending.

The Platform: SEBI-Registered Investment Advisory

Multipl operates as a SEBI-registered investment advisor, ensuring 100% compliance with regulatory requirements. The platform's core technology is its robo advisory engine, which selects the optimal mutual funds from 1,500+ funds across 44 AMCs based on current market conditions and the user's specific goal.

"We are a SEBI registered investment advisor," Raghavan emphasizes. "What we are doing is encouraging people to invest even for your spends beyond savings, which is what is currently happening. We're now getting people to encourage them to invest for their spends as well."

This regulatory alignment is crucial. Multipl isn't pushing people away from regulated investment products—it's expanding the scope of investing from just the 20% savings bucket to include the 80% that goes to needs and wants. For the regulator, which wants to increase market participation in the right way through advisory, Multipl's approach is perfectly aligned with their vision.

AI-Powered Features and Robo Advisory

Multipl has been a robo advisor from day one, using technology to select one, two, or three optimal funds from thousands of options for each user's goal. The platform is increasingly integrating AI capabilities, particularly in its chatbot interface.

"You could come and ask the bot: 'Hey, I want to invest for a travel to Vietnam, suggest me a plan,'" Raghavan explains. "The bot actually gives you a lot of information about how you can go about doing this, what is the value you would get when you're actually investing for it. It's much more educating about spendvesting using AI built on OpenAI."

Looking ahead, Multipl plans to deploy AI more aggressively across investment advisory, income analysis, and personalized spendvesting recommendations based on user consent and spending patterns.

The Market Opportunity: Doubling Mutual Fund Inflows

The market opportunity for spendvesting is massive. Current mutual fund inflows are approximately ₹25,000 crore monthly, with most of it flowing toward the savings bucket (the 20% portion of income). Raghavan believes spendvesting has the potential to double this number to ₹50,000 crore by opening up investing for the 80% of income that goes to needs and wants.

"Today with spendvesting we have the ability to double this number easily," Raghavan notes. "This can actually increase the mutual fund inflow from 25,000 crore to even a 50,000 crore number. So for us, getting more people doing it is actually only going to help our cause because the space is nascent and the headroom is quite high."

Target Segments: From Early Jobbers to Families

Multipl targets working professionals across income brackets and age groups, with as little as ₹100 to start investing. The platform segments users into three primary categories:

Early Jobbers (22-26): Just starting out, maybe on paid internships or first paychecks. Their spends might look different—backpacking travel vs premium holidays—but the fundamental need to invest for consumption is the same.

Experienced Users (26-33): Planning to get married or just married, perhaps with young children. Their spends include more gifting, maybe upgrading lifestyle, and they have more predictable expense patterns.

Family Users (35+): Settled with both spouses working, kids, car, international vacations. Higher spend value but more predictability in terms of insurance premiums, school fees, and planned family expenses.

Marketing and GTM Strategy

Multipl reaches these segments through multiple channels. Digital advertising allows precise targeting across age groups and income brackets. Influencer partnerships connect with different demographics—travel influencers for early jobbers, family finance experts for family users. The company also conducts BTL activities in corporates to reach working professionals directly.

While the approach differs by segment, Raghavan notes commonalities across all groups: "All these people today across all these different age groups are very aspirational. The spend value could be different, the spend direction could be slightly different, but there are some commonalities."

Investor Backing and Category Creation

Multipl has attracted backing from prominent institutional investors and angels who resonate with the company's category-creating vision. Investors include Blume Ventures, KC Securities, and Mixi Global (a Japanese investor bringing international perspective).

"It's a really great blessing to have the institutional investors as well as individuals backing us," Raghavan says. "All of them actually liked Multipl primarily because of the category that we are creating. This is a globally unique category—this is not an India copy version of something that is working in the US or China or elsewhere."

This global uniqueness matters. Many Indian startups copy Western models, but Multipl's spendvesting category is truly being created from India, for India, with potential global application. Blume Ventures, in particular, has backed category creators in the past and understands the unique challenges of building new markets.

Competitive Landscape: Defensibility and Moats

As a category creator, Multipl currently has no direct competition. But Raghavan is realistic about the future: "Once we are successful and once we are more visible, others would see that as an opportunity for them to do this."

However, Multipl has built significant defensibility:

• DNA: The company is built around investing for spend, not holding money forever like traditional investment platforms. This means accepting churn as users spend their invested money—a fundamentally different approach to customer lifetime value.
• Brand Partnerships: With 100+ brand partnerships across 15 categories, Multipl has built an ecosystem that's difficult to replicate quickly.
• Category First-Mover: Starting from zero in a new category means building awareness and educating consumers—barriers to entry that give Multipl time to establish brand equity.
• Market Headroom: The opportunity is so large (doubling mutual fund inflows) that multiple players can succeed even as competition increases.

Entrepreneurship Wisdom: Building for Impact, Not Just Financial Outcomes

Raghavan's journey across two ventures provides valuable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs. His key advice centers on mindset and motivation.

The Right Time to Start

"India as a country—the next decade or more—is something where we're going to see a lot of growth and a lot of opportunities," Raghavan observes. "There's no better time than starting now."

When he started, cloud technology enabled building businesses with fractional compute and storage costs. Today, founders have cloud plus AI making things even more accessible and interesting. "People who are looking to start really have a lot of things going their way."

Motivation Matters More Than Money

Raghavan's most important advice concerns the motivation for starting up: "Take up entrepreneurship not as an outcome in terms of financial outcome. You can't start saying okay, I want to be a millionaire, I want to make so much money. That cannot be the starting point."

"It's always about building things. It's always about identifying a market opportunity and building things around it. Eventually, the financial success would happen. But if you start with the financial outcome...it's going to be challenging. This would just put undue stress and people would not be enjoying the journey."

Key Takeaways: The Future of Smart Consumption

Multipl represents a fundamental shift in how Indians think about the relationship between spending and investing. By pioneering the spendvesting category, the company is enabling debt-free consumption while building wealth—transforming what has traditionally been an either-or proposition into a both-and solution.

For Consumers: The 20-21% value proposition from spendvesting vs 3% from savings or negative returns from credit is compelling. For anyone with planned expenses—whether insurance premiums, travel, shopping, or gifting—Multipl offers a way to achieve goals while building wealth instead of accumulating debt.

For the Fintech Industry: Multipl demonstrates that innovation can come from India for India, not just from Western models copied to the Indian market. The spendvesting category has global potential as consumers worldwide grapple with debt-fueled consumption.

For Investors: The market opportunity is massive—doubling mutual fund inflows by opening up investing to the 80% of income that currently goes to needs and wants. As a category creator with strong investor backing and growing traction, Multipl is positioned to lead this emerging market.

For Entrepreneurs: Raghavan's journey—from cloud infrastructure to fintech, from Bay Area accelerators to Indian category creation—demonstrates the value of building different, not just building better. Spendvesting wasn't an improvement on existing products; it was a reimagining of how consumption and investing could work together.

The Bottom Line

When COVID exposed the fragility of debt-fueled consumption, it created an opening for a fundamentally different approach to achieving lifestyle goals. Multipl's spendvesting platform fills that gap by enabling Indians to invest for their spends instead of borrowing for them.

With 20-21% value delivery compared to 3% from savings, SEBI-registered advisory, AI-powered features, and 100+ brand partnerships, Multipl is making debt-free consumption not just possible but attractive. As Raghavan and his team scale this globally unique category, they're not just building a fintech startup—they're redefining how India thinks about spending, investing, and the path to financial freedom.

The question isn't whether spendvesting will become mainstream—it's whether Multipl can maintain its first-mover advantage as the category it created attracts inevitable competition. If Raghavan's track record and the strength of Multipl's execution are any indication, the company is well-positioned to lead the spendvesting revolution it pioneered.

About the Founder

Paddy Raghavan is the Co-founder and CEO of Multipl, a fintech startup pioneering the spendvesting category in India. Previously, he founded CMPUTE.IO, an enterprise cloud startup that was acquired by Cisco after four years of operations between Bangalore and the Bay Area.

Raghavan began his career at EMC data storage systems in product management, where he gained early exposure to cloud infrastructure. He holds a Master's degree from IIIT Bangalore and has been a technology and product professional throughout his career.

A passionate entrepreneur, Raghavan is focused on building genuinely innovative products rather than copying Western models. With Multipl, he's created a globally unique category that's transforming how Indians approach spending and investing. The company is backed by Blume Ventures, KC Securities, and Mixi Global, among others.