Gold Kinen: Bangladesh’s first certified 22-Karat gold app, providing digital access to physical gold
The Gold Kinen app was released in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in December 2022.
It all started during a random tea session between two friends -- Rafatul Bari Labib and Atef Hasan in early 2021.
The aim was to make gold savings accessible, affordable, and convenient for everyone in the nation with a vision of enabling everyone to save gold.
The duo was joined by Kamran Sunjoy Rahman. With this shared vision, thus was born Gold Kinen – an app which allowed customers to purchase gold in fractional amounts and collect in the form of coins and bars, through the app starting from a minimum of 1g.
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Gold Kinen wants to reinvent the nation's growing digital economy to lead the way into an era of responsible and trustworthy gold in Bangladesh, a press release says.
It registered as a company in January 2022.
The Gold Kinen app was released in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in December 2022.
Later, based on beta user feedback, the app was commercially launched in April 2023.
The response from initial users has been very positive amongst early adopters, as the service was seen as an innovative instrument for anyone to start gold savings in fractional amounts, which directly aligns to the vision of "Gold Kinen" of making gold accessible, affordable, and convenient for everyone in the nation, the press release says.
Operationally, Sunjoy is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Gold Kinen, Labib is the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) and Atef is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
Kamran Sunjoy Rahman is a seasoned International Banker and has experience in the area of Investment Banking and Consumer Banking. He is a successful RMG entrepreneur and is also a musical legend as the vocalist of the band Warfaze for its first four albums.
His banking career spans over a period of 18 years in multiple senior management roles in various multinational banks. Notably, he was the Consumer Banking MANCOMM member and the Country Head for Saadiq (the Islamic Banking wing) of Standard Chartered Bank. Sunjoy is actively involved as a Director of Special Olympics, Bangladesh (SOBD), a global organisation founded in 1968 that works in achieving success, strengths, and skills through sports for people with intellectual disabilities.
Rafatul Bari Labib is a passionate Sales and Marketing professional with a successful career of more than 8 years, his career spanned across multinational and local corporates such as Grameenphone, Philip Morris International and bKash. His last role prior to starting Gold Kinen was in the Trade Marketing team of bKash's Commercial Division.
Atef Hasan has a diversified successful career which started in Accenture, after which he was a Financial Consultant at iFarmer. Prior to starting Gold Kinen he was the Financial Analyst of bKash in the Treasury department.
How Gold Kinen works
According to the founders of Gold Kinen, their aim is to make gold savings accessible, affordable, and convenient for everyone in the nation with a vision of enabling everyone to save gold.
The starting price for buying gold is set at Tk500 and according to the instructions in the app, they have several options when it comes to collecting gold, ranging from 2-gram or 4-gram coins to 1-gram, 5-gram and 10-gram gold bars. The app also has the option to let users gift gold to others, where the recipient will receive the gold straight to their Gold Kinen account.
The customer's gold is secured in "bank-grade" vaults insured by a leading insurance company of Bangladesh, Green Delta Insurance Company Ltd.
All customers' purchased gold via the app is delivered and stored in "bank-grade" vaults managed by Securex Pvt Ltd., which is one of the most experienced vault management companies in Bangladesh.
All payments made in the app are fully secured by the most trusted payment gateway partners such as bKash, BRAC Bank, Visa and MasterCard. Additionally, all Gold Kinen products are hallmarked and certified 22 Karat Gold, and a certificate of authenticity from recognised third party certification agencies are provided with all products delivered to customers.
Gold Kinen follows international standard practices in terms of securing and managing user data. Complying with all data privacy guidelines of iOS and Android platforms is what enabled the publishing of the app in their system. As neither iOS or Android allows any App to publish without a proper and secure platform.
Gold Kinen holds a gold dealing license under the Gold (Procurement, Storage and Distribution) Order, 1987 which allows the company to deal in gold products across Bangladesh.
Furthermore, the company holds an approved DBID under the Ministry of Commerce, Bangladesh, which is mandatory to operate any digital/online business in Bangladesh in a regulated manner.
Gold Kinen upholds compliance very diligently and is constantly working towards maintaining the highest levels of integrity in its operations.
Additionally, Gold Kinen is also an active member of relevant trade associations such as BAJUS (Bangladesh Jeweller's Association), ECAB (E-Commerce Association of Bangladesh) and BASIS (Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services).
