Scaling Savii: A Strategic Blueprint for FinTech Growth

B2C

Fintech

Maria JD Sirotkina

5 min

Savii is a dynamic FinTech startup designed with a big mission: to empower families in the Middle East to take charge of their finances. Recognizing that women often manage the day-to-day budgeting but lack access to the main financial tools, Savii set out to change that.

They created a financial tool where women can effectively manage family finances and logistics taking control of household economy, savings, and budgets.

Client

When I joined Savii, they were gearing up to raise their bridge funding round.
They'd already made great strides with a pre-seed round that helped them build a solid platform and attract the first 4,000 users.

But, there was a catch.

Growing their user base was costly—think new cards and shipping fees—and without a fresh influx of capital, further expansion seemed out of reach. The need to keep the service free for families added another layer of complexity.

Our goal was to create a momentum for the upcoming fundraising rush, raise valuation, and build sustainable systems for future growth.

The challenge

Key numbers

32x

growth

5

months engagement

$0

customer acquisition costs

Instead of trying to add more users, Savii decided to deepen engagement with the ones we had.

We shifted our focus to boosting how much each user spent.

This worked in the short run because we would be able to demonstrate additional value per user. This was aligned with long-term goals as well, because it created a blueprint of a strategy we would be able to roll-out at scale, once the funds became available.

In addition to the One Number (Average Spend Per User), Savii continued building brand awareness, waitlists, and partnerships, building up to prospective user growth.

Strategic shift

• Enhancing User Experience: Savii spruced up the user interface and added new features like regular allowances and easy sub-account top-ups. These changes made the app more user-friendly and kept Savii at the forefront of our users' minds.
• Mobilizing Community: The team has always been connected with their users. This growth period was no different: the founders, Jane and Nicola, rolled up their sleeves and phones, gathering first-hand insights from the users.
• Forging Partnerships: Big names like Visa and Arab Bank became part of Savii's story, boosting credibility and widening the reach.
• Building ecosystem around the startup: Savii consistently created engagement, not just online. They lead financial literacy workshops for businesses in-house, and gathered smaller meetups with their users and community.

By doing all this, Savii quickly became a go-to recommendation for family and youth banking. In a number of communities, their brand would always come up organically.

Smart Tactics

Revenue per user continued to climb up from $0.1 per user to $2.4 reaching a maximum at $3.2 per user at peak.

Financial growth

This created a compelling confirmation for Savii's potential investors, and helped to keep the communication with many more investors and partners.

The key here was to maintain focus on one core metric, measuring success of each growth experiment, on a weekly basis, as opposed to spray-and-pray approach.

The bootstrapped community work Savii was doing helped to build more prospective partnerships in the region, and unlock viral growth tactics that would bring 25000 users, at no cost.

Astonishingly for Fintech space, we spent $0 on attracting the first 4000 users. And built a process around growing 10x from there.

Expansion of User Base

These impressive results caught the eye of potential investors, helping to fuel conversations about future growth and valuation. At the point of writing of this case study, Savii opened the bridge round and has taken a few checks from angel investors.

Investor Interest