65. From Dragon’s Den to Startup Success | Jinesh Vohra
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What is Sprive and how does it help homeowners?
Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reid, the podcast that covers everything about business, management, and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who have bootstrapped companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. What does it really take to walk away from a top corporate career and build a business in the middle of a global crisis? Today on All About Business, I'm joined by Jinesh Vohra, founder of Sprive and former Goldman Sachs professional who left the world of investment banking to become an entrepreneur.
From a family shaped by three generations of business builders to launching just before COVID and navigating the cost of living crisis, Ginesh brings a rare perspective on risk, resilience, and timing. We'll explore what it means to leave security behind, how to survive when the world turns upside down, and what young founders can learn from building through uncertainty. Well, today on All About Business, I'm really delighted to welcome Ginesh Vora. Ginesh is the founder and CEO of a company called Sprive, and this is a UK-based mortgage app. And Ginesh is nodding. It's designed to help homeowners become mortgage-free, which sounds like a very good thing, faster.
What inspired Jinesh Vohra to leave Goldman Sachs for entrepreneurship?
Is that right, Ginesh? That's completely right. That's completely right. I'm glad we got that right. Thank you so much for coming in to talk to me today. Why don't we begin? Why don't you tell me just a little bit about what Vora does and what your business is and how it helps customers so that everyone listening knows where we're headed?
Yeah, Sprive essentially, like you said, it's a mortgage app. There's about 11 million homeowners in the UK and normally it's typically quite expensive to get on the property ladder. So people tend to borrow hundreds of thousands of pounds over a 25 to 40 year period. And the cost of interest is quite alarming, especially with the way the rates are at the moment. And so people download the app, it's completely free to use. And we help people in kind of three cool ways to help them kind of pay off their mortgage faster and save interest.
How did the pandemic influence the launch of Sprive?
The first one is essentially you earn cash back, which you can pay to your mortgage with just one tap by the app. And so imagine you do your grocery shopping, you buy that cup of coffee, that takeaway. Think about anything you do in your life and every single spend when you do it through the Sprive app turns into a mortgage overpayment, which means that you start to save interest and pay off your mortgage faster. Yeah.
Hang on, I want to ask about that. How does that work? So if I buy a coffee, you get cash back that then goes towards your mortgage? That's correct, yeah.
What strategies did Jinesh use to secure angel investment?
How does that happen?
That's amazing.
What was Jinesh's experience on Dragons' Den?
So even if it's a penny or two, it still counts?
Yeah, so exactly. We work with over 2,000 brands, so the likes of Amazon, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, John Lewis & Boots, the list really goes on. And it varies from brand to brand, but imagine you're grocery shopping, because that's something that people do every week. And a family would typically spend easily £100 to £200 a week on groceries, and everyone's got to live to eat. So it's an essential piece of spending. So you go into, say, Tesco's and...
What hiring strategies does Jinesh employ for building his team?
You type in, say, £126, if that's what your shop came to. You press Pay Now in the app, one tap, and you essentially get like a barcode, which instead of paying by your card, you scan the barcode and instantaneously get money into your Sprive account. And in the app, one tap, and that money goes straight to your mortgage. And the great thing about that is as you start to use the app, you can start to then visually see how much interest you're on track to save, how many years you're on track to knock off. So you might start and you might see in the app, oh, I'm on track to pay off my mortgage three months earlier.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Sprive and how does it help homeowners?
0:00–1:33
2
What inspired Jinesh Vohra to leave Goldman Sachs for entrepreneurship?
1:33–2:16
3
How did the pandemic influence the launch of Sprive?
2:16–2:45
4
What strategies did Jinesh use to secure angel investment?
2:45–2:47
5
What was Jinesh's experience on Dragons' Den?
2:47–3:17
6
What hiring strategies does Jinesh employ for building his team?
3:17–3:52
7
What is the future vision for Sprive and its impact on homeowners?
3:52–4:38
8
How does Jinesh define success in his entrepreneurial journey?
4:38–57:43
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from James Reed: all about business
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91. How to build your own talent pipeline | Lisa Bryer OBE & Charlie Kennard MBE