Delhi-based pinBox, a global pension tech committed to digital micro-pension inclusion, said it raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from ADB Ventures, Venture Catalysts (Vcats) and 9Unicorns.

PinBox provides its ready-to-deploy pension tech platform globally to governments and regulators seeking to expand pension and insurance coverage to non-salaried workers. In India, pinBox is working with HDFC Pension, Nippon AMC, SBI AMC and leading insurers to help deliver national pension system (NPS) and customized saving and insurance solutions to India’s 400m informal sector workers without social security benefits.

Founded by global pension sector veterans, Parul Seth Khanna and Gautam Bhardwaj, pinBox uses its micro-pension technology platform, process innovation and a simple and intuitive user interface to address friction and access challenges in delivering micro-pension and insurance solutions to underserved informal sector workers.

The pinBox white-labelled micro-pension tech platform uses secure APIs to integrate with and leverage the digital ID, finance and payments ecosystem in a country to help “switch on” an inclusive social security marketplace. In 2020, pinBox joined hands with WhatsApp and integrated its platform with the popular app to make saving for old age as easy and simple as sending a message. The pinBox-WhatsApp platform is already live in India and Kenya.

“pinBox is uniquely positioned to disrupt the micro pension space with its easy-to-use plug and play digital platform. Leveraging its knowledge of financial security pain points for informal sector workers, especially women, the team has designed an accessible, convenient, and scalable solution. We are excited to partner with pinBox to help it expand coverage across developing markets in Asia,” said Jugnu Pati, investment specialist at ADB Ventures.

Talking about the urgency around pension inclusion, Khanna said, “over 1.7 billion self-employed women and youth across Asia, Africa and Latin America are not eligible for formal pension benefits. With increasing longevity, each of them faces the grim prospect of extreme poverty for nearly 25 years once they are too old to work. Even if half of these excluded informal workers start saving even a dollar a day for their retirement, we could achieve nearly $10 trillion in new long-term household savings within a decade.”