How Basis Built a Women-Only Finance Community in India

Who built it, and what they built

Hena Mehta is the CEO of Basis, a Bengaluru-based financial products and services platform designed for women. She co-founded the company with Dipika Jaikishan, who brought 13 years of experience in wealth management, financial planning, and advisory work.

Before starting Basis, Hena spent 12 years in fintech, including roles at Goldman Sachs and Square in the US and at the payments startup Ezetap in Bangalore. After completing her MBA at Wharton, she moved back to Bangalore to build the company.

Where the idea came from

The idea traces back to 2016, when Hena was admitted to Wharton's full-time MBA program and realized she had no plan to cover more than $200K in academic and living costs, plus the lost income from leaving her job. She had earned well for over seven years but had not invested toward this goal, and she refused a large education loan that would have killed her startup ambitions.

After returning to India, she spoke with over 500 women across urban metros and found that 9 out of 10 faced the same pattern: they earned and lived independently, yet their financial lives took a backseat. The data backed her up — women make up a small minority of India's stock market investors, fewer than 12% take investment decisions on their own, and over 90% of loans in the country go to men.

She teamed up with Dipika Jaikishan to close what they saw as a massive gender-money gap, and Basis was born.