The First Step

Mumbai is the financial capital of India. It is home to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) headquarters, the country's largest banks, and some of the wealthiest people in the world. It is also home to people sleeping on footpaths outside those very buildings.

That contrast never stopped bothering me. Living here, you see it every single day and at some point, you stop asking "why does this exist" and start asking "what can actually be done about it?"

A large portion of India's population lives without access to basic necessities and at the root of that is a deeply entrenched problem: financial illiteracy. People without access to information about savings, credit, insurance, or basic money management are not just struggling financially. They are stuck. Without financial knowledge, every small setback becomes a crisis with no way out.

But here is what made us think deeper. This is not only a problem for people already in difficult circumstances. We looked at our own schools and realised there is no class that teaches a student how to manage a salary, build savings, or understand a loan. Nothing in the curriculum prepares a young person for the financial realities of adult life. The result? Millions of people, across income levels, entering adulthood financially unprepared.

Two problems. One gap. And a question we could not stop asking: why is no one building a medium to bridge this?

That is where Centsible started, not with a product or a business plan, but with that question. We began ideating on what it would mean to give every person, regardless of their age or income, access to practical financial education. Clear, simple, actionable.

This is the story of how that idea became something real. And we are only just getting started.