Search for a personal expense manager on the Android Play Store and you will be flooded with options. From day to day expense managers that help you take care of your mundane daily grocery and other bills to comprehensive apps that offer an expense tracker, a manager and a gazillion other features. However, the problems faced by app users today are known to be a bit more complex than what popular personal expense managers are able to solve. While today’s apps do provide basic insights into the daily expenses, many people still feel that they are just not as intuitive. Amit Bhor and Patanjali Somayaji, two engineering friends who started Thumbworks, aim to solve just that with their personal expenses manager!
So what does Walnut do?
Presenting Walnut, an Android based personal expenses manager that manages your daily expenses, bank accounts, credit cards, bills and loads more! This one single app can not only help users manage all their financial data in one place, it also provides smart insights and intuitive visualizations about your expenses.
The best part about Walnut is that it does everything by just reading your SMS messages coming from banks and ticketing. There’s no need to connect your bank accounts and jump through loops to get it all working.
Use Walnut to Book Tickets on BookMyShow, OlaCabs and More in the Future!
Now here comes a couple of surprises. Walnut will also soon allow you to book movie and event tickets on BookMyShow and thanks to their functionality, you will not have to search for the booking ID in all your messages at the counter as it will present it directly to you 15 minutes before the show! There’s more! Let’s say you do not have a means of transport for the show, no problem! Just use Walnut to book OlaCabs to take you to and from the venue! Walnut will soon offer both the above services and has got loads more planned for the future!
All this sounds Awesome! But is it secure?
Walnut was designed keeping user privacy and security in mind. Unlike the expense manager provided by a leading financial institution that does pretty much the same stuff, Walnut does not need any of you internet or mobile banking passwords. All it does is check your SMS details and other related stuff to gather information. “We do not even store user information with us. All the stuff is done on the client side itself. This is what makes Walnut safe to use as well as convenient at the same time” says Amit.
The People & the Idea behind Walnut
Walnut was started by two engineering graduates, Amit Bhor and Patanjali Somayaji, who started their first company fresh out of college known as Codito Technologies in 2001. They got their first exit in just 4 years when Codito was acquired by Azingo. The duo continued working with Azingo till it got acquired by Motorola and eventually when Motorola got acquired by Google in 2013. They later dabbled with a few other things before finally coming to the idea of Walnut around 6 months back.
The main thought process behind Walnut was the fact that more and more personal communication is moving to social and mobile messaging apps like Facebook, Whatsapp etc. SMS which was earlier a form of communication is being used only for business and update purposes around 50-60%. Many banks and other institutions use it to send updates to consumers about the status of their accounts and other related stuff. Walnut helps integrating all that information under one app. Amit adds here, “You do not have to pay mobile bills, utility bills or credit card bills every single day. But the apps for that will be occupying space and using your mobile data every minute. Walnut will help you do away with all such apps as now you can do all that with just one app. Additionally you can also book event invites and cabs using the app.”
Future Plans
Amit says that they are looking to integrate a lot more features in the App in the near future. “Won’t it be convenient if you can track your shipment from ecommerce websites in a single app?” They are working with leading ecommerce firms for the same and are also planning on many other such features. Amit also believes that their strong mobile background should help them raise funding soon!
