Wondering what to do with your salary? These Indian financial influencers can help you save money

Given that Income Tax season is upon us, you might just want to pay attention to the growing crop of young financial influencers doling out advice with skits, reels and buttered parathas

A decade ago, financial advice meant visiting a primly dressed, mostly middle-aged CA’s office and trying to make sense of mundane jargon, percentages, figures, benefits and risks... Cut to the present: A brigade of 20 and 30-somethings, in far from formal attire, have taken over social media to dole out financial know-how from the comforts of their homes — their backgrounds, however, keep changing from nightclubs to parking lot, office cubicles to automobile showrooms and so on.

Say hello to finfluencers or financial influencers, sporting mock moustaches, dramatic expressions and exaggerated accents, in a bid to simplify finance. They creatively use everyday concepts such as shoe sales, vacations, and buttered parathas even, to draw comparisons with financial terms and explain them through short fun Reels, posts or YouTube videos. 

Given that Income Tax season is upon us. You might just want to pay attention.

The rise of finfluencers first started with the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020. A number of people used this time to understand their finances and find ways to make money work for them. The added stress of salary cuts and job losses further propelled them to look for new avenues to invest savings and make their income grow. Finfluencers like Rachana Ranade, Anushka Rathod, AssetYogi, Pranjal Kamra and a host of others became the go-to for financial gyaan given their easy accessibility on social media.

Shreyaa Kapoor, a former management consultant with an MNC, saw an overnight spike of 2,000 followers on her Instagram page, when she dropped a post explaining Index Funds while comparing them to candy bars. “That’s when my perspective towards my page shifted,” says Shreyaa, whose page @shreyaakapoor_ , started in April 2021, has 332k followers and growing. From posting just three times a week she became more prolific with her posts.

A camera shy person, Shreyaa eventually realised that to grow on the platform she had to jump onto the Reels bandwagon. Her followers are mostly in the 25 to 34 age group but she also gets queries from 17-year-olds who want to know how to start their investment journey. “A trend I have definitely seen is that those in the 18 to 22 age group are a lot more aware about personal finance than we were at that age,” adds the 26-year-old.

Finance, perhaps, is not that niche a subject anymore, as opposed to what Sharan Hegde had thought when he started his YouTube channel and Instagram page @financewithsharan in December 2020 and January 2021 respectively. One of the finfluencers to start out early, he was not expecting more than 30,000 followers. But today he has 1.6 M followers, as much as some of the travel, food and fashion bloggers, if not more.