New challenger bank in India for young professionals – Shelf

A new challenger bank for young professionals, Shelf, is gearing up for launch in India.

Headquartered in Bengaluru and founded this year, the firm has launched a closed beta and is currently accepting new applicants to its waitlist.

Shelf aims to help young professionals manage and control their spending, enabling them to save and invest. It offers features including group wallets to make payments when out with friends, budgeting tools, expense tracking and cards for personal and group use.

According to co-founder Vedant Kumar, 70% of expenses made by young Indian professionals are shared, which is something the current banking system “does not understand”.

“As a neobank, Shelf not only caters to your banking and payments needs, but we also help you manage your spending and pay as a group from the get-go,” Kumar says.

“When you’re using Shelf, you need not have four different apps for banking, payments, tracking expenses and splitting bills. You can just keep your money on Shelf and pay anywhere with a simple slide.”

Shelf was recently accepted into start-up accelerator Y Combinator’s Summer 2022 batch.