Apps like Robinhood made it easier to invest in stocks and Finvest wants to do the same for investments in US Treasuries.
Shivam Bharuka, co-founder and CEO of Get Moving, started working at Finvest in 2023. With interest rates so high, Bharuka wanted to take advantage of the environment — yet banks were giving pennies on the dollar, he told TechCrunch.
“With high interest rates, you’re essentially earning free cash sitting idle through US Treasury bills. However, there is no easy way to buy Treasury bills today,” Bharuka said. “You can buy them through the government website, Treasury Direct, which has been an experience since the 1990s, or use the legacy brokerages like Fidelity or Charles Schwab. These experiences are often opaque and accompanied by a dull user experience. Most modern fintech apps also don’t allow you to invest in underlying fixed income assets.”
He was part of the Winter 2023 Y Combinator cohort, however, Bharuka initially went with a company focused on logistics for India. He ended up pivoting when he noticed the pain points associated with buying Treasuries.
He and his team are developing Finvest to make it seamless to buy, manage and sell US Treasuries. The company works with a brokerage firm to execute the trades.
The functions of the investment application of Finvest. Image Credits: Get moving
Here’s how it works: After downloading the iOS or Android app, users create an account, add a bank account and start a deposit. Typically, there is a one-day verification process to create a brokerage account. However, Finvest allows the deposit to be exhausted, so once the account is approved, the transaction will begin.
Finvest charges a fixed management fee of 0.03% per month on the average daily market value of the Treasury’s assets and monthly management fees.
Bharuka is not alone in wanting to make this process easier. Zamp Finance, powered by Sequoia, provides a Treasury management platform for better access to US Treasuries. Finvest sweetens its offer with a high-yield cash management account that gives you a return of 4.4%, higher than most savings accounts.
The company is in its early stages, with Bharuka declining to say how many customers have downloaded the app, but he said about $1 million in deposits have been made since launching in December.
It has also already raised $2.7 million in funding from a group of investors that includes Bayhouse Capital, Unpopular Ventures, Y Combinator, Olive Tree Capital, Pioneer Fund, Fractal Ventures and a group of angel investors, including former Airbnb executive Oliver Jung.
Bharuka plans to use the funding to expand Get Moving’s engineering team and eventually add other asset classes to the Finvest app, for example, corporate bonds and municipal bonds.
“We are also planning to launch it internationally,” he said. “We’re exploring this angle because there’s a lot of interest in bond investments, especially in Latin countries like Argentina or Brazil, because their economies haven’t been that strong. They want to invest in a stronger economy, but there’s no immediate way to do that today.”
