As a fintech start-up, iCare Benefits is trying to offer our low-income clients a sustainable, long-term purchasing solution for everyday products and services. Our idea is to provide a all-inclusive purchasing platform where our customers can buy everything they might need (from phones and TV, through insurance and spectacles and all the way to food items and office supplies). All this through a seamless, streamlined digital platform.
This platform allows us to integrate this underserved part of the Asian population into the retail and e-commerce market. I like to think of iCare Benefits as the Amazon for Low-Income People. And whilst the fintech world in Europe and the US is focusing on AI-investing and blockchain technologies, we at iCare are looking beyond that. We are looking at bridging the gap between e-commerce and digital lending for these massive customer segment that cannot access even basic household items.
In Asia, at this point in time, there is a need to look at the segment of the market that is underserved: for example, in Cambodia there are 5 to 7 e-wallets that tend to the urban population (approx 1.5m people). However, there are no e-commerce platform for the remaining 14m rural people. And thats where iCare fits in. Instead of targeting the small, heavily competitive middle-class urban market, we serve the isolated low-income group where we see much more value and long-term growth prospects.
Due to obvious differences, there is a clear difference in the Europe/US vs Asia fintech sectors and I think iCare is well positioned to take on the Asian market by becoming a hybrid between e-commerce and digital lending. If we are able to grow as fast as we envision, we could see ourselves become the leading platform in Cambodia and Asia.
Pablo F. Alonso Caprile 