Empowering people by giving them control of their digital life and digital legacy.
Business overview
Location | HOUNSLOW, United Kingdom |
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Social media | |
Website | www.PlannedDeparture.com |
Sectors | Travel, Leisure & Sport Digital B2C |
Company number | 08438004 |
Incorporation date | 11 Mar 2013 |
Idea
Introduction
Planned Departure makes it easier to organise digital assets during life and manage digital legacy after life.
In an increasingly digital world, it is important to consider how our digital legacy will be administered. Traditional estate planning vehicles, such as wills, mostly deal with the distribution of physical assets. Online accounts and other digital assets are often not included in a traditional will. As a result, online accounts can be lost, locked or abused after the user has passed away.
Planned Departure provides peace of mind by ensuring that online accounts and digital assets are transferred to the right people at the right time.
Planned Departure stores everything in an encrypted format and allows 24/7 access to the user. It uses AES-256 encryption from the industry leader and a cloud based infrastructure for a high level of security and reliability.
Planned Departure is a revenue generating service and is poised for accelerated growth.
Intended impact
Much of our lives has transformed from a physical world to a digital world. Our personal communication has largely moved to emails and facebook, banking and investments are now typically managed online and even mundane things like utility bills have gone online. Paper statements, in any shape or form, are becoming a thing of past.
This transformation has made our digital possessions extremely valuable. Our digital footprints have huge emotional and financial value associated with them. The virtual goods market has already reached 15 billion USD and with the rise of cryptocurrencies such as BitCoin, it is set to become even more valuable.
This continuous digitisation makes succession planning challenging as there are no paper trails for friends and family. Rise of nuclear and distributed families make this problem even bigger. Because of the lack of succession planning, online accounts can become an easy target for identity thieves - as no one is monitoring them. In the US alone, identity of 2.5 million deceased users is stolen every year. It’s a huge emotional and financial burden for friends and family who have to deal with it.
Lack of succession planning also contributes in the billions of unclaimed assets all over the world. There are billions of unclaimed dividends, insurance policies and bank accounts. Lack of information to right beneficiaries is the primary reason for these unclaimed assets.
It’s difficult to keep information about digital assets in a traditional will because of the fast moving pace of the online world. Keeping everything up-to-date in a traditional will becomes a tedious process. On top of that, a will is a public document (once the testator is deceased) and it is not recommended to keep copies of usernames and passwords in a will, as anybody could request a copy of the will.
Planned Departure provides a digital solution to handle digital assets. It is an essential complementary solution for our digital life.
Substantial accomplishments to date
- Planned Departure was part of the London Business School’s prestigious Incubator program and received the Founder’s Award from Deloitte’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
- Our first round on Seedrs was closed in just three weeks after raising over 200%.
- In the past few months, we have set-up our advisory board, integrated tools from marketing automation to customer support, launched many innovative features and mobile apps on Android and iOS.
- We have participated in the Bugatahon and our app has been tested by hundreds of professional testers across the globe.
- We have proven our route to market and have many agreements in place with estate planners, lawyers and charities.
- Prestigious media outlets such as SpringWise, YourStory, BBC Radio, Forbes, Inc etc have written about Planned Departure. It is also covered by sector specific publications such as LawSkills, Legal Futures, Charities Digital news, Blake Morgan and the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.
Monetisation strategy
Revenue for Planned Departure would mainly come from two different revenue streams initially:
- Subscription revenue from the B2C customers; and
- Subscription revenue from the B2B customers who will offer Planned Departure account to their clients.
1. Subscription revenue from the B2C customers
This model is already working and we are generating revenue from this model. There are three separate plans for user to chose from:
- Monthly
- Yearly
- One time payment
We currently have users in all the plans.
2. Subscription revenue from the B2B customers
For our B2B customers, we have built an innovative solution on top of Planned Departure. It gives them ability to drive engagement with their customers on various channels and help them assess their needs in a much better way.
Our subscription revenue from this stream would come from various sectors such as
- Law firms with private client division - our initial focus
- Charities with interest in legacy fundraising
Digital legacy is becoming an important factor for players in these sectors and in past few months we have built specific value propositions for them on top of our digital legacy solution.
We are currently trialling our solutions for partners in some of these sectors.
Use of proceeds
Planned Departure is gearing for a bigger round now. We have made excellent progress in tools integration, product development and have proven our route to markets. We have tools and processes in place now which we believe will allow us to significantly scale our operations.
We are raising this round to utilise the remaining SEIS funds. Money raised in this round will be spent on:
- Cyber security certification
- Business continuity planning
- Legal compliance
- Addressing feedback from clients and consumers
- Continuous content generation and advertising
- Events participation
With the money raised in this round, we will prepare ourselves for a bigger round.
Market
Target market
We believe in ‘Start local and go global’ approach. Our initial focus is on the UK market and then we plan to go to other geographies.
This product is targeted primarily at individuals from the 35-64 year age group, who are active online and have sufficient assets to be distributed to their beneficiaries.
According to the latest ONS report there are about 22 million people in this age group. Based on our current pricing, and assuming everyone has some form of digital assets worth saving, we estimate a market value ~£400 million in the UK alone.
Also, with the increasing penetration of the Internet and continued digitisation, the global market for this will surely only grow.
Characteristics of target market
Internet penetration is increasing rapidly. In India, the number of internet users is increasing at a rate of 50 million people each year. Last year in the UK, an average of 36 million adults accessed the Internet everyday. Furthermore, the population as a whole is ageing with more and more older people using the internet. As a result, our target market is growing continuously.
The trends for an increasingly online population and increased digitisation make digital assets very important. The US government and the UK Law Society have started advising citizens to consider social media and digital legacy in their wills.
The market for digital legacy products is evolving. PasswordBox recently acquired Legacy Locker and Entrustet was acquired by Secure Safe. Organisations such as Facebook and Google have acknowledged this as an important problem. We believe that there is a unique opportunity for us with the market still in its early stages of development and no clear leader present.
Marketing strategy
We are planning to use both, B2C and B2B2C, routes to reach our target market.
Our first route to market is B2B2C.
In this route, we would build partnerships with relevant businesses to get their customers on board. We have built an interesting value proposition for them and we have got a good response from them.
We aim to establish partnerships with businesses in the following sectors
- Estate and probate lawyers
Our service complements a traditional will. People who have wills are already thinking about succession and are more likely to find planned departure relevant. We already have partnerships with wills and estate planning firms such as Custodia Estate Planning and Balance Consultancy.
- Funeral directors
Planned Departure can be bundled easily with prepaid funeral products. This will offer users something which can be valuable for them during their lifetime. Planned Departure will also make it possible for the organisations to connect with the families of the deceased.
- Insurance providers
Insurance products such as whole life insurance or critical insurance cover could be a perfect vehicle to distribute Planned Departure.
- Finance Planners
Financial planners' clientele are often very diligent with their own personal planning and tend to have substantial assets that require taking care of. We expect that this group should also have a keen interest in partnering with us.
- Charities
The legacy fundraising market for charities is worth approximately £1.98 billion every year. Planned Departure can help charities in their legacy fundraising activities. We are already working with a national charity bibic.
Our second route will be the B2C route.
For B2C, we plan to invest in social media, create communities and work on organic link building by partnering with bloggers. We are also building virality and will incentivise users who invite more people to use Planned Departure.
Competition strategy
This sector is still relatively niche and we believe that there is comparatively little competition in the markets that we want to target. Even in the US - where this concept has gained greater acceptance and organisations have secured funding - there are only a few players and we see no market leader.
Our product is already live and with the money we are raising we expect to be able to expand even more quickly into our target market. We want to capitalise on our first mover position, capture users and build partnerships to protect us from any new entrants or competition. Once we have key relationships with estate lawyers, funeral directors, charities etc. in place, we believe that it will be difficult for our competition to access the B2B2C route.
We also believe our technical capabilities will become a key differentiator. We have a well defined technical roadmap and are confident that our innovative features, combined with mobile apps, will make it difficult for competitors to catch on.
Apart from these, our most important differentiator is our team. We believe that our team has the right mix of technical expertise and business knowledge. We have an impressive track record of consulting with organisations such as Amazon, BBC, HMRC, IBM and have got patents, published our work and are well known in our professional circuits. Our co-founder, Komal has graduated from London Business School and has got excellent connections in our target market from the LBS alumni network.
We are also proud of our university network and between both the co-founders, we cover three premier universities from the UK and India. Our alumni network from these universities will be of significant benefit for this business going forward. We have got our product tested by hundreds of professional testers without incurring any cost because of our university network.
We strongly believe in our own ability to innovate, execute and utilize our connections to build this into a highly successful business.
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