Our Today's article is all about a buy-now-pay-later product. But a rather unique one. It comes with a 0% interest rate for credit up to Rs 5 lacs (~$6,700). But there are some conditions: you have to pay a monthly subscription fee; you can use only 10% of the credit line per day; and when you make a transaction, you have to pay back in three installments over 60 days, no matter how small the amount.
And just to ensure you don't actually think you're paying an interest disguised as a subscription fee, you also get free, unlimited doctor consultations and discounts on medicines purchased on the app.
If you're wondering what doctors and medicines are doing on a BNPL app, you're not alone. But this is the unique premise of OneFreedom, a transaction finance product that has put a spin on the age-old business of giving credit. It was launched in January by Dhani Services, the lending arm of the financial services conglomerate Indiabulls Group (from builders to financial product)
For all its complexity—or perhaps because of it—OneFreedom has already racked up 1.32 million paid users and is on track to record a $100 million in revenue by the end of March 2022. In the quarter ended September 2021, Dhani told investors it can make an annual gross profit of $40.2 per customer. There's no denying it has found a way to make money in an inherently hard-to-make-money business.
Dhani wants to be your go-to app for both wealth and health (it has a separate subscription for online doctor consultations and an e-pharmacy). It aims to grow its paying subscribers across all services from 3.5 million to 10 million by next year. But to achieve scale, it needs to get users coming back to the product that marries its wealth and health verticals, OneFreedom.
Can free doctor consultations, discounted medicines, and cash-backs on a loan app really hook users and get them to continue paying a subscription fee? A new trend in the market like this many attractive plan will be arriving in the open market soon..
