NiYo: Solving A Key Problem For The Salaried Class

Virender Bisht

There are many issues that take center stage in a person’s life and influence all major decisions that they make. One of the topmost priorities in everyone’s life is how much money comes in every month to manage their day-to-day expenses. Every one of us is trying hard to maximize what we get every month. NiYo, an innovative startup that is based out of Bangalore is creating a solution for this very problem. We spoke to Virender Bisht, CTO and CO-Founder, NiYo to understand this better.

This Bangalore based startup has come up with a smart and efficient way to technically increase the take home salary for employees of corporates. They have tied up with Yes Bank and have come up with a very innovative solution. They have devised a card that is linked to a expense basket or allowance account of the employees. You may ask me “What is new here?”

To answer this, we need to go through how corporates divide and process salaries for employees. The pay structure of employees is split into fixed pay and other components. The other components are split into heads like travel, medical, food and attire to name a few. How these allowances work is that if there are bills against which these are claimed by the employees, then they are credited as reimbursements without taxing them and if there aren’t any bills, they are taxed and then credited to the employee. The process for claiming these generally involves a lot of back and forth with the bills and claims and the unclaimed amounts getting taxed. This is what NiYo is addressing with the Benefits card.

NiYo Saving

The Benefits card simplifies this whole flow. It comes with an app. There is one version of the app that employees can use to claim benefits and submitting the bills that are relevant.  There is a company version of the app that serves as the administrative end of this process and helps them credit allowances at one shot with a very intuitive and simple UI. If used correctly, this can actually effectively increase take home salary by roughly 10% for some people. Given the tight and fast lives we lead today, this is a very good and ideal thing to have.

Let us talk more about the bank end of this, YES BANK, India’s 5th largest private sector Bank has partnered with the Fintech startup NiYO to revolutionise the Employee Benefits ecosystem in India. NiYO features an integrated solution comprising of a Multi-Pocket Card, a Mobile App and a digital account with multiple wallets. Under this partnership, YES BANK along with NiYO has rolled out the “YES BANK NiYO Benefits Card” that makes it easy for organizations to give employee benefits, and for employees to claim the benefits.  The solution will leverage the latest in mobile technologies and build on the IndiaStack initiatives including eKYC by UIDAI and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) launched by NPCI.

The addressable market is close to 30 million salaried employees in India who are eligible for various employee benefits. NiYO was launched in July 2016 as a pilot in Bangalore and has already clocked over 2000 customers in less than two months. NiYO and YES BANK plan to onboard over 20,000 companies and 5 million customers onto this platform over the next 5 years.

What this all means to the employees is that when their employer used NiYo, they actually get a card that is accepted at over a million and a half establishments just like any other credit or debit card. So when there are expenses, all you have to do is swipe the card and bill it. You have used the allowance and given the bill in one shot. This also simplifies the January to March declaration and submission mess that people have to go through to claim tax exemptions or deductions for expenses. All in all, a very big boon for salaried individuals. There are also provisions on the card to break the amounts into smaller wallets within and just swiping them at listed establishments is all that an employee needs to do. Personal money can also be added to the wallet for other expenses at unlisted establishments.

This solution is very useful and structured very well. When corporates get on to the platform, they not only solve the expense and flexi-benefits problems but also can handle things like employee addition and scaling very easily. NiYo has very intelligently put the solution on the cloud, hence making it a zero-IT investment for employers and flexible by definition.

In a country like India, this solution will give much relief to the common man and make life easier for the employers too. We really think that NiYo is one of these better startups that are actually solving critical problems. We will be watching them with a lot of interest and wishing them well on their journey. It is notable that Prime Venture Partners is backing them. They are known to hold a portfolio of really effective and efficient startups solving key issues.

About Shakthi

I am a Tech Blogger, Disability Activist, Keynote Speaker, Startup Mentor and Digital Branding Consultant. Also a McKinsey Executive Panel Member. Also known as @v_shakthi on twitter. Been around Tech for two decades now.

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