Kiro

London Business School

Website Link: https://www.joinkiro.com/

Industry: Fintech / Edtech

MBA Founding Student Name(s): Alisha Chowdhury

Brief Description of Solution: Kiro is the first-ever AI-powered financial coach, connecting Gen Z and young adults to personalized financial resources. Kiro partners with credit unions, building societies, and pension providers as distribution partners to support millions of Gen Z and young adults in the US and UK.

Funding Dollars: $200,000 (backed by Founders Factory and Aviva Group)

What led you to launch this venture? My desire to launch Kiro stems from my personal and professional experiences. I had limited access to financial education growing up. It wasn’t until I stumbled across investing in college that I learned about the basic principles of personal finance and recognized the importance of financial education to my overall well-being. This led me to work as an asset management investor and for a private equity fund that managed the pensions of everyday citizens. While in those roles, I realized that there was a huge gap in providing financial guidance to Gen Z and young millennials, two generations that face unique economic challenges. Over 75% of Gen Z say they’re stressed about their personal finances. Most turn to friends, family, or social media platforms like Reddit for financial guidance, but these sources often lead to poorer economic outcomes.

While I was doing my MBA at London Business School (LBS), I started my own financial and career coaching business and saw an even greater need for accessible, empathetic, and personalized financial guidance. Consequently, I decided to scale my capabilities and create an AI financial coach underpinned by the knowledge of financial experts.

Over time, I recognized a unique opportunity to partner with mission-driven organizations in the financial service ecosystem, such as credit unions, that prioritize supporting underbanked or underserved communities. This insight, among others, led Kiro to evolve into a partnership business model where we offer our financial coach as a white-label solution to credit unions, building societies, and pension providers, ensuring the end customer has 24/7 access to their AI financial coach within their existing banking or investment platforms.

What has been your biggest accomplishment so far with venture? We bootstrapped our business with less than $10,000 for the first year-and-a-half and were able to launch two versions of the product and gain significant traction and partnerships with universities.

What has been the most significant challenge you’ve faced in creating your company and how did you solve it? I come from a “non-technical” background, which means I’m not an engineer. Many people questioned if I would be able to build an AI product without having that expertise. However, the technical acumen and expertise gained as an investor during the first part of my career has been invaluable in allowing me to build a product focused on financial education and planning. To learn the technical side of the product, I started building our solution on low code solutions, took online courses on AI, ML, RAG, and NLP, and networked extensively in the AI space to learn from subject-matter experts. I built a team of AI and deep learning engineers who now work with us part time or as advisors and mentors.

How has your MBA program helped you further this startup venture? I actively participated in every part of the entrepreneurship ecosystem at LBS. I won and competed in LBS’ Hackathon, participated in LBS Launchpad as a finalist, completed the LBS entrepreneurship summer school, was the co-president of the Entrepreneurship Club (eClub), and am now in the LBS Incubator. All these resources have helped me find funding, gain connections and recruit critical team members.

What founder or entrepreneur inspired you to start your own entrepreneurial journey? How did he or she prove motivational to you?  Melanie Perkins, co-founder of Canva, is one of my role models. She comes from a non-technical background and was rejected time-and-time again (over years!) by VCs and struggled initially to recruit a technical team. She persevered and believed in her product and now she is one of the most successful female founders today!

Which MBA class has been most valuable in building your startup and what was the biggest lesson you gained from it? Growing a Social Enterprise was one of my favorite classes at London Business School. It taught me about how I can build a business that can be both profitable, scalable, and commercialized, but also have a positive social impact on society.

What professor made a significant contribution to your plans and why? The Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at LBS had a huge impact on my experience. This was not only the professors, but the team members who supported all the entrepreneurship initiatives for the students. This includes Rubina Kalra and Osman Haneef, who spent their weekends and evenings supporting us and attending our hackathons, pitch competitions and all the events the eClub hosted. They were always willing to support me in my journey, connect me with the right individuals, and supported me in every part of the development of Kiro.

How has your local startup ecosystem contributed to your venture’s development and success? I was involved with the Female Founders Rise and British Asian Entrepreneurship (BaeHQ) networks in London and in the global MBA ecosystem. Being a solo founder, having a strong network and support from my ecosystem helped me find the right resources, funding and talent.

What is your long-term goal with your startup? Help millions of young adults to achieve financial empowerment and partner with large financial service institutes as their go-to partner in offering financial planning and guidance to their customer base.

Looking back, what is the biggest lesson you wished you’d known before launching and scaling your venture? Recognizing how important it is to keep talking to customers until you REALLY understand their pain point before spending too much time and energy building a full product.

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