Interviewed by Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee, Team MBR

Happi is a new digital financial service to enable the fastest banking and nano loan facilities for the underbanked/unbanked youths of Bangladesh in partnership with Dhaka Bank and Mastercard. Its vision is to enable affordable banking for 1.50 million underbanked/unbanked youths and SMEs by 2026. Happi is highly focused on aspiring millennials and gen-z who will become the leaders of tomorrow. Team MBR was in a conversation with Mr. Kazi Sazidul Hasan, Founder and CEO, Happi, to learn about his inspirations and vision behind the company.

Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee: Happi aims to provide instant banking accounts, savings, and credit facilities for Bangladeshi underbanked/unbanked youths through its app. Would you kindly share with us how you came up with this idea?

Kazi Sazidul Hasan: The idea came from my own experience, where a top-rated bank took almost three months to issue my credit card. Even the application of my co-founder, Shahadat, got rejected twice before he got his first credit card, even though his salaries were deposited into bank accounts on time. When we investigated both of our cases, we figured out that banks adopt a conservative approach towards millennial customers and early-stage companies before disbursing loans or credit cards to their owners or employees.

Also, most banks are reluctant to reach out to university students to get them to open bank accounts. In my university life, I never saw any bank come to our campus to get students to open bank accounts. I myself had to visit the bank to open my first bank account. Our banks are highly focused on big corporate clients. They hardly focus on young customers, who are going to constitute the future customer base. This corporate-focused mindset is widening the “trust gap” between them and the members of the younger generation, who are tech-savvy and have smartphones with internet access.

Our journey started by considering the abovestated scenario to build an easily accessible, credible, and fastest digital banking experience for the underbanked/unbanked aspiring millennials and gen-z, who are mostly young professionals, young entrepreneurs, and university students. Our focused age group is 18–32 years, which is highly underbanked or unbanked and represents 40% of our total population.

Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee: May we know about your core team? What relevant experience do the team members have to build the products?

Kazi Sazidul Hasan: We are three co-founders in this mission and come from three different industries, like banking, tech, and growth marketing. Prior to starting this journey, I worked for more than four years in the e-commerce and tech industry, which includes companies like Daraz and Boupon, as a part of the growth marketing team.

Our COO, Md. Fazlur Rashid, worked for more than 25 years in reputed banks like Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, and Eastern Bank in every area of retail and SME banking. And, our Tech Lead, Md. Shahadat, worked for four years in two tech companies named MaxPro IT and TechOrbital as a team lead.

Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee: While providing credit facilities, a thorough assessment of the creditworthiness of the applicants is a prerequisite. As Happi’s target group comprises mostly the underbanked/ unbanked, how is it going to ensure that?

Kazi Sazidul Hasan: Dhaka Bank and Happi have teamed up with Dana Fintech to use digital credit scoring to check customers’ creditworthiness before lending. Since consumer lending is very technical and hypothesis-driven, we have customised the scoring measurement in the credit scoring system to rate a customer for lending. We have segmented customers into three categories: young professionals, young entrepreneurs, and university students. Currently, lending services will be available for entrepreneurs and professionals. For students, they will need to build credit scores and reach the minimum level of score to enjoy Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) features on a small scale.


Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee: Some of the Mobile Financial Service (MFS) providers are already offering savings and limited credit facilities for their subscribers through their mobile banking apps in collaboration with some renowned banks and NBFIs. May we know how Happi’s services are different from the aforementioned services?

Kazi Sazidul Hasan: The consumer lending industry has a potential market size of USD 15 billion in Bangladesh. So, everyone will have a reasonable size, scope, and scale to play with. Only the best customer experience creators will win the market, and hence, we are highly focused on enhancing the customer experience.

Here, a customised banking product will be launched by Dhaka Bank and Happi that will be different from everyone else’s in the market in terms of features and services. If you consider MFS providers, then they have limited scopes for lending because they do not own a balance sheet and they have some limitations in customer segmentation, which is why they cannot lend to everyone. Therefore, the savings options in MFSs are not that lucrative for our targeted customers because they offer an average return.

In our case, Dhaka Bank and Happi are innovating jointly in the lending and savings spaces. All the planned strategies will be rolled out over the next two years. To be clearer, ask yourself if the MFS company founders keep all their money in their own MFS wallets. The answer is negative because MFSs have some limitations where bank accounts are more versatile. Now, the comparison is clearer for our customers.

Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee: As neobanks have no physical branch network, trust issues from the clients’ end may arise. How is Happi planning to address this issue?

Kazi Sazidul Hasan: Happi has partnered with Dhaka Bank and Mastercard. So, all the customers will get accounts with Dhaka Bank in their Happi app. Additionally, all customers will also get Dhaka Bank and Happi co-branded cards powered by Mastercard. Therefore, customers can visit any Dhaka Bank branch and take all other services from Dhaka Bank. All the processes of the Happi app will be supervised by Dhaka Bank based on the central bank’s guidelines and instructions. So, Happi account holders will automatically get maximum security in banking under the umbrella of Dhaka Bank. In this relationship, Happi is a technology company that is developing front-facing advanced technology, product distribution, and its own brand, which helps Dhaka Bank acquire more youth customers by staying asset light. You can see similar types of successful partnerships all around the world. For example, Chime, Monese, Timo, KOHO, Tide, One, Jupiter, Fi Money, Neo, Aspire, Neat, and so on. All these fintech companies are partnering with incumbent banks to offer customised banking services to a niche segment of customers. This kind of relationship creates a win-win situation for both organisations.

Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee: Would you kindly enlighten us about the current scale of operations at Happi? How is it approaching the market?

Kazi Sazidul Hasan: We have started piloting and have already onboarded 22 startups to offer our services after the official launch. Already, we have facilitated four startups with our services on a limited scale. By the end of May 2023, we are planning to launch the Happi app officially, which will provide a top-notch banking experience for our customers.

Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee: Do you think there is adequate policy support for the techbased financial service providers to boom? What are the areas in which changes are needed?

Kazi Sazidul Hasan: I have seen a huge enthusiasm from the central bank, the government, and the ICT ministry to inspire the innovators in the fintech space to bring financial inclusion and build a cashless society. Recently, we have seen that the government and the central bank have launched Binimoy, an interoperable digital transaction platform, to make the transactional ecosystem more flexible. We are hopeful that our policymakers will keep being innovation-friendly and facilitating resources for innovators in the fintech space.

Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee: May we know about the rounds of funding Happi has raised so far? When is it going to raise the next round of funding?

Kazi Sazidul Hasan: Previously, we raised a preseed round of USD 120,000 from foreign angels, F10 Fintech Incubator Singapore, and ZAH Investments Limited (UK). In addition, we have also received a BDT 10 lakhs grant from the ICT ministry of Bangladesh under their iDEA project.

Currently, we are raising USD 500,000 as part of our pre-seed round extension and have received commitments of a certain amount from existing investors and a foreign fintech company.

Akhlaqur Rahman Sachee: What are the challenges Happi is facing in the way of smooth operations? How is it planning to mitigate them?

Kazi Sazidul Hasan: In Bangladesh, the biggest challenge is hiring talented and aspiring individuals who can take the company to the next level. However, we are in the continuous process of onboarding new talents into the team for our credit operations, tech, growth, and customer service positions.