Deepak Kumar of Soulwallet tells us how they help customers conduct personal loan comparisons and compare credit cards in the UAE.
First, how are you and your family doing?
Deepak Kumar: Top of the world! Thanks for asking. It has been a brilliant year so far, and there is so much optimism around.
Tell us about you, your career, and how you founded Soulwallet.
Deepak Kumar: I studied IT management at Macquarie University in Sydney. Both Rahul (co-founder) and I worked together at Citibank for more than a decade. With a strong consumer lending expertise, we were able to clearly see an opportunity in the personal finance comparison space in the region.
UAE has a highly competitive consumer lending market and high penetration of digital and mobile usage. Soulwallet went live in December 2018, and since then, we have been assisting customers with their personal financial needs. Soulwallet offers its customers advisory on personal finance recommendations through product rankings, saving tools, and editorial content.
Our credit card rewards optimizer is a popular tool in the UAE that can customize recommendations on the credit card based on an individual’s spending and feature preferences. We currently assist 60,000 customers a month with personal finance recommendations. We have also partnered with most of the leading banks in the UAE.
How does Soulwallet market its product/services online?
Deepak Kumar: We are a digital platform with 80% of our customers accessing our portal on their mobile devices for product recommendations and assistance. We run digital marketing campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We are also quite aggressive on google campaigns and attract many customer visits through google search.
How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how did you get through it?
Deepak Kumar: We were immune to the pandemic from a business sense. With the coronavirus impacting face-to-face meetings and direct sales, it was an opportunity for us to build solutions and engagement models. We launched innovative engagement models with our clients and improved our user experience on the portal during this period. Our customer visits grew by 300% in 2021 compared to 2020. We operate on a 70% work-from-home model right from day one.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to manage your online marketing?
Deepak Kumar: There are quite a few tools that we use for social media marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Email marketing, Lead enrichment, Data analytics, CRM, Graphic creations, etc. Facebook Ad Manager, Google Ads, Search Console, Google Analytics, and adjust are a few.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
Deepak Kumar: UAE has comparison sites that focus on insurance. We have established ourselves as a preferred partner with leading banks in the UAE. We are proud of this, and we are carving a niche in the consumer lending space. We are different by providing our customers with relevant and quality content, user-friendly solution, and unique money-saving tools. We have aggressive plans to scale and expand to other markets over the next few years.
Your final thoughts?
Deepak Kumar: It is not an easy decision to give up the comfort of the paycheck and move into entrepreneurship. But if you have a dream and are prepared well, you have to take the leap.
Believe, stay focused and have fun!
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