INDmoney (IndWealth) Review – My Thoughts and Is it Worth It?

My Note before you read this review:

Ever since publishing this review a year ago, INDmoney has been fantastic to work on every single issue I highlighted below. Their platform has changed more than any other fintech app I know of.

I said there was no feedback system for advisory chat, and they put it in there. I also highlighted how the advisory team over the chat was no-good, a bunch of financial advisors who were clearly untrained to help INDmoney users.

Guess what, they are gone now. And it’s so much better now. I wonder what the feedback showed, I would have loved to see the reports.

The US Stocks withdrawal fee has been lowered, by a lot. I pointed out how Groww had the lowest fee and INDmoney didn’t just reduce their fees to Groww’s level, they outmatched it. Good for everyone!

Now you also don’t have those pathetic namesake advisors and financial planners, at least on the low-tier plans. The AI does all the advisory jobs. Part of my reason to leave INDmoney with a sour taste was the advisor I got as a part of my INDMoney membership.

It is just so much better now.

They’ve also taken the suggestion on security measures:

INDmoney is now secured by Cross-Account protection. And they don’t use Freshdesk chat anymore.

Mutual fund tracking has become super smooth. They added Solana to their crypto tracking list, (a reader pointed this out in comments).

Everything that made me irk has been shifted or gone. Their advisory services are gone now!

My experience with this app was soured solely because of the manager I got. I’m glad those incompetent fools are no longer on the platform.

Overall, INDmoney is a great app to invest in mutual funds, U.S. stocks and track your assets across different investment modes/schemes. Hopefully, they can also become a great app for Indian stock trading and investing.

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You guys know I don’t review anything I don’t, haven’t, or won’t use. I also don’t review based on assumptions or thoughts. I test things, try to dive deep, and then form my opinion.

That’s exactly what I did with INDmoney also known as INDWealth. I’ve been testing the INDmoney portfolio management app, so you don’t have to. I’ll share everything you need to know.

Based on my experience, there are certain things you should take note of before using INDmoney. It’s a great app, no doubt, but when it comes to financing, take no chances. 

Here’s my full INDmoney review.

Let’s begin with an introduction.

What is INDmoney?

INDwealth is a finance app, that allows you to track all of your investments in one place. It isn’t just a tracker. It also lets you invest in direct mutual funds, fixed deposits, insurances, and US Stocks.

So, all in all, it means you can track your investments from all over the market, and also start investing using INDmoney. It allows you to see your net worth based on calculating your liabilities and investments.

It’s like Mint for Indians. We have long awaited an app like INDmoney. An app that consolidates all of our investments, bank accounts and liabilities and shows us our actual net worth.

This means INDmoney also helps you keep track of your loans and credit cards. It also allows you to apply for new loans if you have a credit score of 650+ (CRIF).

INDmoney uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to analyze your investments. You have to complete a questionnaire and they prepare a personalized investment plan based on your risk tolerance.

With IndWealth, here’s what you can track and monitor in one place:

• Stocks
• NPS (Tier 1)
• PPF
• EPF
• Mutual funds
• Bonds
• Fixed Deposits
• Real Estate
• Alternative Investment Funds
• PMS (Portfolio Management Services)
• Credit cards
• Loan
• Manage the entire investment portfolio of your family in one place.

It’s a remarkable app, one of a kind for Indians. Allowing you to track your investments, loans and help you understand your asset allocation is so important to achieve financial security.

And INDmoney kind of helps you by solving the biggest issue – knowing where you are making money and where you’re losing it.

INDmoney Stock Market Tracking & Analysis

INDmoney can connect with Zerodha or UpStox and pull your stock market investment data automatically. You can also upload your CDSL/NSDL statement manually to start tracking your stocks.

Using Artificial Intelligence, INDmoney allows you to analyze stocks. Both the stocks you hold in your portfolio and other stocks in the market. Not all of them, but the majority.

They provide valuable information in a simple and easy-to-understand way. For instance, you can quickly take a look at a company’s:

• PE ratio
• Growth over the years (Profit, NET & EPS)
• Valuation analysis (is the stock fair at the price or overvalued)
• Stock momentum
• Quality (Shareholding trend, ROE and if the company is generating a consistent profit)

The comes, their consensus recommendation.

What’s interesting here is they display a Buy, Hold and Sell call next to the stocks. Later in this article is my experience section. I’ve shared which stocks in my portfolio were marked as Sell and what recommendations I received from the advisory team.

Their stock tracking and reporting dashboards are really good. You get a glimpse of profit/loss, average buy price, total gains/losses, and your trade data in one place.

You can also invest in stock IPOs directly from the INDmoney app:

This option is only available if you’ve connected INDmoney with your Zerodha or Upstox account.

It automatically pulls up your DP id so you don’t have to worry about that.

INDmoney Mutual Funds Experience

To test the INDmoney investment platform, I started four SIPs as per their fund basket recommendation. All of them are on the recommendation of INDmoney.

In order to set up the payment for SIPs, you need to set up a NACH e-mandate. It takes a couple of days to get approved. Keep in mind, once you set a NACH e-mandate, you can easily cancel it by requesting INDmoney. However, most banks don’t have a clear way to cancel any mandates on your account. Usually, it would take you multiple calls.

And make sure you keep enough money in your bank account so these mandates don’t get bounced. The charges are super high in your mandates bounce due to insufficient balance.

Anyways, the payment for my first two SIPs was deducted from my account. My order was placed the next day.

Here’s what happened:

INDmoney app showed zero updates regarding these SIPs. Though I got confirmation from the respective mutual fund managers. For 8 days, the app had no updates. It kept showing orders placed.

Reaching out to the contact team, the app was updated and now I could see an update with folio number and an order successful notification.

However, the redeem option was disabled. So was the cancel SIP option. I had to contact support, and it took a decent back and forth to get this sorted out. In the end, I still wasn’t able to cancel the SIPs myself.

I needed to send them an email with written consent to get those cancelled.

Coin by Zerodha, ETMoney and Groww – these applications are miles ahead of INDmoney. And provide a much better experience for beginners as well as regular mutual fund investors.

It does something others don’t:

It shows you the investment value projection pre/post taxation:

Mutual Fund Baskets

INDmoney allows you to create, track and understand your financial goals. Its goal tracker allows you to set a target, and by analyzing your current financial situation, investments, income and expenses it suggests the best way to achieve it.

Mostly with mutual funds. To achieve any of the set goals, you have suggested a basket of different mutual funds, and the appropriate SIPs to reach that goal on your target.

Once you set up your mutual fund investments based on this basket, it automatically starts tracking your goals in relation to the SIPs.

You can see a clear projection of how much you need, how much you will have, and the Pre/Post-tax value of your investment.

This isn’t a part of the paid advisory, so you can use this feature with the free app.

It is a great way to set your goals, invest systematically, consistently, and track your progress. The goals have a projection graph, too. It allows you to see how much you need to invest to meet your goals and how your investment grows over time.

You can enter different numbers to see how different contributions to your investments might affect your progress.

But this feature is only available with a paid membership plan.

You can also easily switch between funds and place STP/SWP orders using the INDmoney platform.

INDmoney Robo Advisor

INDmoney uses Robo Advisory to help you set up and organize your investment using Artificial Intelligence.  It’s a recent release from INDmoney and currently, they are the only fintech app in India to deploy Robo-Advisory at full-scale front-end.

The Robo AI they use will suggest changes according to the market and can rebalance your investments in mutual funds.

INDmoney advisor using AI automatically sets your goals, manages your spreadsheets, and re-allocates your assets accordingly.

It considers all the changes that are happening in the market. This way, investment decisions are data-based rather than speculation.

Some of the features INDmoney Robo Advisory offers:

1. Automatic Goal Setting
2. Goal Shortfall
3. Analyzes the right insurance coverage based on your investment profile
4. Suggests actions you need to take to achieve a goal
5. Smart Robo-advisory on rebalancing and asset reallocation

They also introduced Robo STP. A systematic and automatic fund allocation to mutual funds that protects you from high volatility based on data.

Here’s how it works:

1. You allot a lumpsum amount to invest
2. Robo STP uses data to gather whether it’s smart to invest in Equity or Defensive funds.
3. Based on volatility and other factors, the Robo STP will automatically re-balance your portfolio.

I find this fascinating, and I think INDmoney deserves a lot of credit for this particular feature.

Credit Card Tracking

I had to delay this review in order to cover their new BETA feature – credit card statement tracking and rewards.

INDmoney now not only tracks your loans/credit card, but it also allows you to sync your credit card statement and get a reminder for due dates as well as earn rewards when you spend on certain merchant websites.

You will earn rewards in the form of INDCoins every time you pay using your credit card on merchants like Starbucks, Uber, PayPal, etc.

Using these INDCoins that you earn as a reward, you can buy cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more.

INDmoney will automatically pull due dates, transactions and other data by scanning your credit card statement via email. This will only work if you are using IND Auto Track automated tracking, which means you are giving INDmoney access to read your emails.

In an update released recently, you can now earn shares of select US stocks for good financial habits for free as a reward. Including credit card purchases.

However, you can only withdraw about INR 2500/month by selling the shares you’ve earned through the reward system. You will also earn US stocks whenever INDmoney decides you deserve them, at their sole discretion.

New Feature – Crypto Tracking

INDmoney has finally released their much-requested feature – Crypto Tracking.

Now you can track more than 15 popular crypto coins and tokens through your INDmoney app. Currently, you can track only a few very popular coins such as Bitcoin, ETH, Cardano, Uniswap just to name a few.

Coins like Solana and Avalanche are currently not available.

All you need to do is enter the transaction details to begin the tracking. INDmoney will show you the profit/loss and historical price graph.

INDmoney US Stock Market Investment Experience

I regularly invest in the US stock market (about 10% of my portfolio) with a separate brokerage account. My ideology is simple; I make money from the U.S.; I need to give back to its economy at least a part of what I make.

I didn’t need a U.S. stock brokerage account from INDmoney, but I’ve got to test it for you guys. So I did.

The account opening process was smooth, took a little less than 2 minutes, and I was ready to invest $$$.

To begin purchasing U.S. Stocks, you need to add as little as $1 into your account. INDmoney is in partnership with Drivewealth, much like Vested and your US brokerage account is regulated/insured by Drivewealth. Up to $500,000 is insured.

You need to transfer money from your registered bank account (the one you registered at the moment of opening the US Stock investment account on INDmoney).

It’s a hectic process, but it’s how every platform works. You need to add a beneficiary, enter a number of details that you receive via an email from INDmoney, and transfer the money from your bank while paying an additional fee as well as GST.

ICICI will charge 1,000 INR per transaction, so I would recommend HDFC since it’s only 500 INR.

Here’s what happened with my case. I transfer $100 from my bank on 11th April 2021.

I waited till 14th, no response.

On 15th April, I got verification from my bank stating that the transfer was complete.

I raised a ticket and the INDmoney support team responded with a request to wait another 1-3 days.

On the 15th, suddenly the money is deposited in my account. And guess what I bought?

An S&P 500 index tracker, by Charles Schwab.

Note that earlier there was a withdrawal fee of $35. I told the support team this doesn’t make sense since Vested only charges $10.

Since then, withdrawal fees have been reduced to $5. Good job guys!

INDmoney IND Super 2-in-1 Account

I’ve to say, ever since writing this review, INDmoney has been releasing tons of new features.

Recently, they partnered with SBM Bank to release the IND Super savings account. It’s a free savings account offered by the State Bank of Mauritius, a bank that’s popular for making forex transactions free and cheaper.

With this new feature, you don’t have to manually transfer funds to your INDmoney US stocks account. You can simply fund your IND Super account, and transfer the money to your US stocks account free of charge. They also happen to offer the best INR to USD conversion rate.

And the best part, you can fund this account via UPI.

This feature saves a lot of hassle and charges. 

People who previously hesitated to invest in US stocks due to remittance fees and lengthy/complex transfer issues will find INDmoney a great way to get started. It’s as easy as it is to invest in the Indian stock market. Completely frictionless.

Always ask for a confirmation receipt from INDmoney once you initiate a transfer to your US stocks account. Plus, make sure you ask for proof of holding from DriveWealth as well.

Trigger Price for U.S. Stocks

The Trigger Price feature is a way to buy / sell US stocks at the price you desire.

It works like an order that is active until the trigger condition is met. This trigger will be valid for 3-months. Anytime the price condition within this period is met, your order will be placed and executed, provided there are enough funds in the trading account.

Privacy

Note that INDmoney doesn’t use any proprietary, custom-built chat platform for their advisory conversations. When you signup for their premium plans, Gold, Platinum and Platinum +, you are speaking with your advisor/expert finance manager via Freshchat.

Freshchat is a third-party live chat software developed by Freshworks Inc. They are a great company and I know a few people over at FreshWorks. I recommend the CRM to my business blog readers as well.

However, I would never share anything personal related to my finances, any critical information whatsoever with any INDmoney expert via this chat. Freshchat may be the most secure, honest and trustworthy chat software. It’s still a third-party software, not owned by INDmoney.

Whenever you chat with your advisor/expert on INDmoney, take this into account. You can’t share anything personal, period. There is no guarantee of privacy when multiple layers are involved in a conversation.

I’m not pointing to anything, not blaming anyone, not calling out any company. I’m simply painting a hypothetical narrative. It’s an opinion, not a claim – you know.

They should have developed custom chat software long ago. it doesn’t take that much capital, I know from personal experience. We had one of our clients build one forking a very popular open-source live chat software.

Security Measures

INDmoney is a finance app, so its platform should be extremely secure.

They ask for accessing your email account – in order to read certain emails from certain senders. Such as mutual fund manager, NPS, CSDL, etc. They need to access your email automatically in order to keep your investment tracking data updated. Without any manual interference.

This is a major privacy concern. They use BishopFox as a regulator to prove they protect your data with the highest level of security measures. BishopFox is a great way to prove how secure you are since they are pretty good at verifying and testing security implementations.

When you give INDmoney access to your Gmail account, you can review the app’s permissions and connection by going to Google’s permissions page here.

You will notice the INDmoney app doesn’t have Cross-Account Protection by Google.

Other finance apps, such as CRED and Groww do have it. It’s nothing mandatory, but it’s an extra mile fintech companies go to ensure trust and add another layer of fraud detection.

INDmoney seems to be pretty lousy on the development part.

Remember, giving access to your emails to anyone is a very bad idea. Especially when you receive financial statements in that email. Apps promise to read emails only from a specific set of senders, but you can never know.

So I ran a test.

I used CRED to perform a quick test and see if they read emails other than from banks and credit card companies. I sent my credit card statement via an email similar to the bank, with the exact same content but a fresh statement for the current month. CRED couldn’t fetch it.

Turns out, CRED does not read other emails. But again, you never know.

I did the same test with the NPS statement for INDmoney this time, and it too didn’t read that email.

They also let you enable an option to read your messages to pull bank balance and transaction data.

Point to note – I use INDmoney on an iOS device. Currently, reading bank balances via messages isn’t available on iOS. But it is available on Android smartphones.

App Development

Their app development is pretty bad. I would think it’s because the company is overly targeted on adding new features and acquiring new customers without having the necessary workforce.

One day it’s working fine. The other day, you have problems like this:

Suddenly, I couldn’t track my goals.

Similarly, their web app hasn’t been functioning well for as long as I’ve been using it. Their stock analysis tool seems to have a bug that doesn’t allow it to properly scan the stock data. For me personally, it has been like this for 4 months.

Update: Now they’ve fixed the stock error, but then they suddenly stop tracking bonds. It just keeps going on and on.

Is INDmoney Free?

INDmoney is free to get started. All the features come free with the app, but they do offer premium plans.

It’s called Gold and Platinum Membership.

Their premium plan starts from 399 INR per month. Depending on the worth of your investments, you will have to pay anywhere between 399 INR to 11,999 per month. They have a custom plan too if your investments are greater than 15cr.

Speaking of the premium plan, let’s talk about INDmoney’s membership and my experience with it, in detail.

My Experience with the INDmoney Membership (Multiple Plans)

Before talking about the advisory, let’s talk about the INDmoney Dynamo – a feature that opens when you subscribe to any membership plan.

INDmoney Dynamo is a stock analysis algorithm. Apparently, their consensus algorithm analyzes multiple factors, including valuation, growth, momentum and quality.

After analyzing your portfolio, you get a Buy, Sell or Hold call for each stock. You can also explore other listed stocks on BSE and NSE to check INDmoney Dynamo’s analysis for stocks you don’t have in your portfolio.

The prime expert thing is a joke. It’s not personalized. You get this info for free everywhere, including TickerTape.

My overall experience with the advisory was extremely sour. All three members were unresponsive, completely unprofessional and had zero interest in anything to do with INDmoney.

INDmoney’s advisory services come at a price – which means we have every right to judge their services, critique them, and justify their value.

I’ll be unambiguous with you. It’s downright pathetic.

This wasn’t the case when they launched 2 years ago. If you go back and read the 2019 reviews, you will find positive opinions regarding the advisory.

To me, this seems like a case of scaling too fast, without cultivating a company culture and scrutinizing the team.

Then I found out these advisors, CAs, research analysts and wealth managers were independent contractors, not an employee. So was I told. They kept saying they are contractors, not employee, they work on their own schedule.

I was assigned a group of three people:

• An advisor – Mr. Rohit. A man who’s super busy replying to emails, messages and won’t call.
• A CA – Goodman. Incompetent. He told me he’d reach me with proposals but didn’t. He is a consultant for INDmoney after all, not an employee.
• And a “Ms. No Position”, Shristi Omer – After asking several times, She said she was my point of contact for issues. She did nothing to rectify my issues, other than sending an email to the advisor assigned, who didn’t bother replying via email or phone. Honestly, she seemed clueless, like she didn’t know a thing about onboarding.

Shristi Omer out of everyone did the worst job. She was like that virtual assistant I come across that knows nothing about the business they are in.

I think I was assigned to the worst team of all. Keep in mind, Mr. Rohit – this gentleman is assigned to you up until the 5,999 INR membership plan. You’re not getting anything better by paying more money.

They’ve got to have a feedback system in place in order to know if people are getting proper responses, satisfactory results from their membership.

It’s weird, they don’t have any feedback collection going on.

Mutual Fund Rebalancing

The ridiculousness of INDmoney’s advisory is also reflected in their rebalancing advice. Mutual fund rebalancing has multiple meanings. Usually, it’s a term used for asset allocation. About how you distribute your capital among multiple asset classes and funds to maintain a certain position.

In this case, it’s about switching to a mutual fund that has a low expense ratio compared to the one I’m currently investing in. The expense ratio is a percentage of your invested amount that fund managers charge in order to keep their organization running.

The lower it is, the better.

So, INDmoney’s advisory team suggest I should rebalance my mutual fund by switching from HDFC to DSP mutual funds.

How much would I earn if I switched to the DSP fund from HDFC?

A whopping 0.

Or 0.76 INR to be precise.

This move doesn’t make any sense at all.

Paying my own cash for this advice made me think I’m wasting money like a 10yr old brat in a theme park.

It’s pure nonsense!.

That’s my verdict.

But as I always suggest to you guys, this is my experience. It doesn’t mean yours could be the same.

If you’re someone looking for investment advice, remember this:

Your money, your risk.

Before paying someone, investing in a stock/mutual fund, or buying an asset, ask yourself, what’s the need?

Is this to divert your guilt in case you lose your money? So you could have someone to blame and point fingers at?

I suggest you use INDmoney as a tracker, and that’s all. The membership isn’t worth it.

You shouldn’t make trades or buy a stock based on A.I. recommendation.

Some Privacy Tips If You Choose To Use INDmoney

First things first, for android users. Be careful which apps you allow to read your messages. Like INDmoney, there are multiple apps that ask to grant permissions like reading your messages.

INDmoney also reads your bank messages to track your bank accounts and expenses. This feature isn’t available on iOS and I don’t think it’s coming anytime soon. Which is a good thing.

Second, DO NOT LET any app read your emails, especially your primary Gmail account. Your primary account is the one where you receive corporate, financial, and personal emails. As of now, in my test, they don’t seem to read emails apart from a selected number of senders.

But things change, people change, and company culture/values change in a blink of an eye. Don’t put your privacy in jeopardy.

Here’s what I did: 

I invest through multiple accounts, under multiple family names. I allowed INDmoney to access my low-tier investment accounts and custom email addresses where I receive mostly business updates, nothing special.

Third, don’t take impulsive actions on their recommendations.

Ever Since Publishing This Review:

Seems like INDMoney’s team is making things better.

They’ve released a couple of new features, including personalized portfolio updates. This is an AI-driven update regarding your stocks.

This is something interesting. A feature that keeps you informed regarding the companies you care about.

Regarding the stock dashboard error, which wasn’t fixed for months – it’s gone. Now you can analyze your stock portfolio just fine.

INDmoney’s Prime Chat also got a feature I thought it should have had from the very beginning.

They finally have a feedback form at the end of the Prime Expert Chat.

Starting January 2022 – INDmoney has also reduced the U.S. stocks withdrawal fee to $5 per withdrawal below $2,000.

If you withdraw more than $2,000, it’s free. Most of my queries with INDmoney have been getting resolved, so I’m starting to appreciate their management team.

Why You Should Consider Using INDmoney

They have a unique product. Virtually face no true competition. There is no app like INDmoney that tracks your portfolio – from stocks to real estate, everything.

They publish extensive reports on companies, stocks, funds, markets and more. Which is great and highly useful.

They also send you periodic notifications about your portfolio, which I find quite nice in the volatile bull market. But it could be annoying for some long-term investors who don’t like monitoring the market.

You can get a notification when dividends are finalized for the stocks in your portfolio. And when dividends are paid out, you get a notification showing exactly how much you will receive, when, and your stock details as well.

You can also monitor your alternative investments and get notifications when your stocks touch ATH (All-time high) and ATL (All-time low).

At the end of the day, this was my experience. Your requirements, experiences, expectations, and results with INDmoney will differ from mine.

But is it worth the membership price?

No. 

Maybe for you, not for me.

Try the INDmoney app.

*Get free US Stock when you sign up

And see how it works out for you.

You should also check out the best apps to start investing in India.

Let me know your thoughts on INDmoney in the comments.