Startup Deep Dive : ET Money — how a zero-commission app tracking Rs 70,000 crore sold for Rs 366 crore

By the time ET Money changed hands in June 2024, its app tracked roughly ₹70,000 crore of Indians’ money, yet the two companies behind it booked only about ₹31 crore of combined revenue in FY24, and the whole business sold for ₹365.8 crore. That gap between money watched and money earned is the story of ET Money. It built one of India’s largest platforms for buying mutual funds by giving away the one thing rivals lived on: the distribution commission.

The app is not the Economic Times newspaper, and it was never a venture-backed startup in the usual sense. ET Money was built inside Times Internet, the digital arm of The Times Group, borrowing the “ET” brand equity of Economic Times while running as a separate fintech product. Its founder had already failed once at almost exactly this idea. This is how a second attempt, a zero-commission bet, and a premium subscription turned an expense tracker into a ₹366 crore exit to a wealth-management major.

Quick facts

What ET Money does

ET Money is a personal-finance and investing app for retail investors in India. Its core promise is that you can buy and hold direct-plan mutual funds at zero commission, and manage the rest of your money life in the same place. Around that core it stacks several product lines:

• Direct mutual funds and systematic investment plans (SIPs), sold at zero commission on the app (as per company statements and Wikipedia).
• ET Money Genius, a paid advisory and portfolio-guidance subscription launched in January 2022, run through the SEBI-registered investment adviser Banayantree Services Limited.
• Distribution of insurance, the National Pension System (NPS), and fixed deposits, where ET Money earns fees from partner institutions.
• Loans against mutual funds (LAMF), launched on 10 July 2025 under 360 ONE ownership, letting users borrow against holdings without selling them, facilitated through NBFC partners (company press statement, July 2025).

The customer is India’s mass-affluent, largely digital investor. As of a September 2022 company disclosure, about 85% of users were aged 27 to 40, and the average annual investment per user was around ₹1.5 lakh.

The origin: a failure named Moneysights

ET Money’s founding insight was paid for the hard way, years before ET Money existed. In 2009, Mukesh Kalra and Santosh Navlani, both formerly at InMobi, started Moneysights, a platform to help Indians research and buy investment products online. It raised about $250,000, with backing that included Blume Ventures, InMobi co-founder Naveen Tewari, and former HP and IBM executive Prasad Duvvuri.

The idea was early in the wrong way. Indians were coming online, but, as Kalra has described it, they were not yet willing to do high-involvement financial transactions on the internet. Moneysights stalled around 2012, the team dispersed, and Kalra went back to InMobi as a salaried employee for roughly two years while the product ran on autopilot. Then Times Internet acquired Moneysights in October 2014. The lesson Kalra carried out of that five-year detour was about timing and trust: the product was right, the moment was not, and financial products need a reason for people to believe before they will move money. That belief-first thinking became the spine of ET Money.

The struggle years

The second attempt did not open as a fund platform at all. In 2015, inside Times Internet, Kalra’s team launched SmartSpends, an expense-tracking app that read your SMS alerts and told you where your money went. Tracking was a way to earn a place on the phone; it was not the business. In October 2016 the app was rebranded to ET Money and pivoted toward investments, using the Economic Times brand to signal credibility to first-time investors.

Several hard turns followed:

• The pivot from tracking to transactions (2015 to 2016) meant abandoning the surface reason users had installed the app and asking them to do the very thing Moneysights had failed to make them do: invest online.
• The zero-commission decision was a deliberate near-death of the obvious business model. By offering direct-plan mutual funds at zero commission, ET Money gave up the trail commissions that most Indian distributors depend on, and had to invent other ways to earn.
• Regulatory friction hit the advisory entity. SEBI inspected Banayantree Services (registered as an investment adviser in January 2017) for the 2018 to 2019 period and, by an order dated 22 August 2022, imposed a penalty of ₹3,00,000 under Section 15EB of the SEBI Act for compliance lapses, including a missing annual compliance audit and weak client risk profiling.

None of these were fatal, but each one removed an easy path. The company had to build trust, give away the easy commission, and satisfy a regulator, all while convincing salaried Indians to start a SIP on a phone.

The turning point: the ₹366 crore sale

The single event that defines ET Money’s trajectory is its sale. On 13 June 2024, 360 ONE WAM, the wealth and asset manager formerly known as IIFL Wealth, agreed to acquire 100% of both ET Money entities from Times Internet for about ₹365.8 crore, reported at roughly $44 million.

The numbers on each side of that deal explain why it happened. On the seller’s side, ET Money was a large, trusted retail funnel that earned very little in accounting terms: its two entities together booked only about ₹31 crore of revenue in FY24, against roughly ₹70,000 crore of assets its app tracked. On the buyer’s side, 360 ONE managed about ₹4.67 lakh crore and served more than 7,200 high- and ultra-high-net-worth clients, but had almost no mass-affluent digital reach. ET Money brought over 9 lakh transacting clients and more than 1 lakh revenue-generating users into that fold in one stroke.

The deal was structured as ₹85.83 crore in cash plus 35,90,000 fully paid-up 360 ONE equity shares issued at about ₹779 each, so Times Internet stayed exposed to the upside as a shareholder of the listed acquirer. Within a year of the deal, the combined entity pushed ET Money into secured lending, launching loans against mutual funds on 10 July 2025.

The money behind it

ET Money’s funding shape is unusual for an Indian fintech of its size: it did not run the familiar ladder of Seed, Series A, Series B rounds under the ET Money name. The capital came from a corporate parent.

• Moneysights (the predecessor): about $250,000 raised around 2009 to 2010, from Blume Ventures, Naveen Tewari (InMobi), and Prasad Duvvuri.
• Times Internet (the builder and owner): acquired Moneysights in October 2014 and funded ET Money internally from 2015 onward, rather than raising external venture rounds for the brand.
• 360 ONE WAM (the acquirer): paid about ₹365.8 crore in June 2024, split into ₹85.83 crore cash and 35,90,000 shares at about ₹779 each.

So the “last valuation” for ET Money is really its exit price, about ₹365.8 crore, and it is a firm number backed by a listed acquirer’s disclosure rather than a private-round estimate. The two backers that mattered most were Times Internet, which gave a twice-failed idea a decade of runway and a trusted brand, and 360 ONE, which gave it a lending balance sheet and a reason to move up-market.

How it makes money

This is the part people get wrong. Because ET Money is famous for zero-commission direct mutual funds, it is easy to assume it earns on fund purchases. It does not earn on the direct funds that made it popular. The money comes from around that free core:

• ET Money Genius subscription: a recurring advisory membership launched in January 2022, priced from about ₹249 per month, run through Banayantree Services. This is the clearest recurring-revenue line.
• Distribution fees from partners: commissions on insurance policies, NPS, fixed deposits, and loan referrals, paid by partner financial institutions for successful placements, not by the user on direct funds.
• Loans against mutual funds: from July 2025, fees and spreads on secured lending facilitated with NBFC partners, using the existing investor base as the funnel.
• Paywalled analytics: smaller add-ons, such as detailed capital-gains reports, sold within the app.

The economics are a classic funnel: acquire millions of users with a free, high-trust product (direct SIPs), then convert a slice into paying advisory subscribers and higher-fee product buyers. It is why the revenue figures look small next to the AUM: most of the AUM sits in zero-commission direct funds that generate no fee, and the margin lives in the thin layer of users who subscribe to Genius or buy insurance, NPS, and loans.

The numbers

Public financials sit in the two legal entities that 360 ONE acquired. Revenue is disclosed; entity-level net profit or loss was not available in the sources reviewed, so it is left out rather than guessed. All figures are turnover or operating revenue in ₹ crore.

Alongside revenue, the operating scale grew far faster:

• AUM tracked on the app: about ₹30,000 crore (reported ~$4 billion) as of July 2022, growing to roughly ₹70,000 crore by the June 2024 sale.
• Growth versus industry: ET Money reported 48% YoY AUM growth in the year to July 2022, against mutual-fund industry growth of 6.9% in the same period (company disclosure via Inc42, September 2022).
• Monthly SIP flow: about 12 lakh SIP transactions worth ₹275 crore per month as of September 2022.

Where the money comes from

The surprise in ET Money’s mix is how much of the money it “manages” it never actually holds or earns on. Two buckets sit side by side:

• Invested on the platform: about ₹28,000 crore at the June 2024 sale, of which more than ₹25,000 crore was in mutual funds. Earlier, in July 2022, about ₹11,000 crore (~$1.4 billion) was invested directly on ET Money.
• Imported / tracked but held elsewhere: about ₹19,000 crore (~$2.7 billion) as of July 2022, and a much larger tracked figure of roughly ₹70,000 crore by 2024. This is money users linked for tracking, not necessarily fee-earning assets.

The paying core is narrow and specific:

• ET Money Genius had more than 76,000 active paying advisory clients with about ₹1,200 crore of AUM at the 2024 sale.
• Gross monthly sales across products exceeded ₹1,200 crore at the time of the deal.
• Retention was high: 96% annual retention reported for July 2022, and 94% cited around the 2024 sale, with about 60% of users investing monthly (September 2022 disclosure).

So the revenue geography is not geographic at all; it is a funnel. Millions track and invest for free, a few lakh transact, and roughly 76,000 pay for advice. That thin paying layer, plus partner distribution fees, is where the money actually comes from.

The risks

• Regulatory and compliance risk, already realised once. SEBI penalised Banayantree Services ₹3,00,000 by an order dated 22 August 2022 for compliance failures found in a 2018 to 2019 inspection, including a missing annual compliance audit, infrastructure and personnel shortfalls, blurred segregation between advisory and distribution, and absent client risk profiling. An investment adviser that also distributes commission products lives under constant conflict-of-interest scrutiny, and SEBI has repeatedly tightened these rules.
• A monetisation model that fights its own popularity. The product people love, zero-commission direct funds, earns nothing. Revenue depends on converting free users into Genius subscribers, insurance, NPS, and loan buyers. If conversion stalls, AUM can keep rising while revenue stays small, exactly the pattern visible in the ~₹31 crore FY24 revenue against ₹70,000 crore tracked.
• Intense, well-capitalised competition. ET Money competes with Groww, Zerodha’s Coin, and Paytm Money for the same retail investor, several of them larger and directly funded. Distribution economics are thin, switching costs are low, and pricing power on advice is limited when rivals bundle it free.

The takeaway

The transferable lesson from ET Money is that giving away the obvious revenue can be the strategy, not the sacrifice, if you are clear about what you are buying with it. Kalra gave away mutual-fund commissions to buy trust and scale, then sold access to that trust through advice, insurance, and loans. The catch is patience and ownership. It took a first failure, a corporate parent willing to fund a slow-burning brand for years, and a buyer with a balance sheet to turn ₹70,000 crore of watched money into a ₹366 crore outcome. Free is a wedge, not a business. The business is what you are allowed to sell once people trust you.

Frequently asked questions

Is ET Money owned by the Economic Times newspaper?

No. ET Money uses the “ET” brand associated with Economic Times, but it is a separate fintech product. It was built and owned by Times Internet, The Times Group’s digital arm, and since June 2024 it has been owned by 360 ONE WAM. The newspaper and the app are distinct businesses.

Who founded ET Money and what did they do before?

ET Money was founded by Mukesh Kalra, with Santosh Navlani as COO. Both were earlier at InMobi and, in 2009, co-founded Moneysights, an online investment platform that stalled around 2012 and was acquired by Times Internet in October 2014.

How much did 360 ONE pay for ET Money?

About ₹365.8 crore, reported at roughly $44 million, in a deal announced on 13 June 2024. It was structured as ₹85.83 crore in cash plus 35,90,000 360 ONE equity shares issued at about ₹779 each.

If direct mutual funds are free, how does ET Money make money?

It earns from the ET Money Genius advisory subscription (from about ₹249 per month), distribution fees on insurance, NPS and fixed deposits, referral income on loans, loans against mutual funds from July 2025, and some paywalled analytics. The direct funds themselves are commission-free.

How large is ET Money?

At its June 2024 sale, the app tracked about ₹70,000 crore of assets, with roughly ₹28,000 crore invested on the platform, over 9 lakh transacting clients, and more than 76,000 paying ET Money Genius subscribers holding about ₹1,200 crore.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026 or the earlier dates cited against each fact. Where a US dollar equivalent appears, it is as reported by the cited source, not a conversion computed here.

• Wikipedia, “ET Money” (accessed September 2026) — founding, rebrand, products, AUM and user milestones.
• Entrackr, “360 One acquires Times Internet’s ET Money for $44 Mn” (June 2024) — deal value, FY24 turnover of Moneygoals (₹2.04 crore) and Banayantree (₹28.7 crore), entity roles.
• Inc42, “Times Internet Sells ET Money To 360 One WAM In A $44 Mn Deal” (June 2024) — cash and share split, AUM, transacting and revenue-generating users, Genius subscribers and AUM.
• Storyboard18 and Indian Startup News (June 2024) — deal date, structure, ₹70,000 crore tracked AUM, gross monthly sales, 360 ONE’s AUM and client base.
• FounderThesis, “How Mukesh Kalra Built ET Money Into A ₹366 Crore Exit” — Moneysights history, $250,000 raised, exit metrics, monthly SIP book and retention.
• Inc42, “How Decision-Making Tools Helped Wealthtech ET Money Grow 48% YoY” (September 2022) — AUM ₹30,000 crore, 48% vs 6.9% growth, invested vs imported split, SIP transactions, retention, demographics.
• The Company Check / regulatory filings summaries (2025) — Banayantree Services FY25 revenue ₹46.32 crore, up 62% YoY.
• LexiBox summary of SEBI inspection order for Banayantree Services (order dated 22 August 2022) — ₹3,00,000 penalty and compliance findings.
• The Week / The Wire / Business Standard (July 2025) — launch of Loans Against Mutual Funds by ET Money as a 360 ONE company on 10 July 2025.

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