How Yellow Plans To Bring Order To The Broken Estate Planning Market

How often do we hear stories of brothers fighting over the ownership of a piece of land? We may choose to play possum or remain completely ignorant, but the truth is that property disputes are a common spectacle in India, often stemming from inadequate legacy planning by the deceased.

The reason is simple: Estate planning, which includes writing a will, managing succession and transferring assets after the demise of the holder, has remained a deeply private and uncomfortable topic for Indians. The idea of writing a will or transferring the legacy is often postponed until it’s too late. 

Reports suggest that fewer than 10% of Indians create a formal will in their lifetime, compared to around 46% in the United States, where estate planning is a culturally embedded and professionally guided practice. 

Most Indian families don’t even list their assets on paper. On the contrary, if made or written at all, wills are often handwritten, poorly stored, and rarely formalised. This becomes the root cause of inheritance disputes among Indian families. 

On the other end of the spectrum, poor inheritance planning has resulted in over INR 50,000 Cr worth of unclaimed assets lying idle with the government.

While India lacks a cultural norm or structured system for legacy planning, the pandemic has prompted Indians to start preparing for life’s uncertainties.

Consequently, the Indian end-of-life planning market is now taking shape. It generated $1.7 Bn in revenue in 2023 and is projected to become a $2.8 Bn opportunity by 2030.

Incorporated in 2021 by Niranjan Ravikiran Vemulkar and Nikhil Varghese, but launched only in 2023, Yellow is investing in the future of estate planning with a structured and digital solution. 

The Bengaluru-based startup aims to digitise and democratise estate planning in India through its tech-backed platform that offers services ranging from will creation and asset listing to post-demise legal assistance. 

Its digital-first approach enables users to create legally compliant wills online, minus legal jargon or other complexities. The estate planning startup aims to make legacy and inheritance planning simple and accessible for everyday Indians. 

Beyond will-making, the platform provides a comprehensive suite of estate-related services, including setting up family trusts, transferring properties and bank accounts, obtaining legal heir certificates, power of attorney, gift deeds, and even medical directives. It also provides complete post-death legal support. 

Backed by Gruhas, the SAGE initiative of the Ministry of Social Justice, IIFL Wealth, Kunal Shah (CRED), Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital), TT Jagannathan (TTK Prestige), and angel investors, Yellow has raised three rounds of funding so far, though the total amount remains undisclosed.

Solving A Silent Post-Life Crisis

Most Indians don’t have access to wealth managers or legal advisors. Families often don’t even know what assets exist until it’s too late, and then spend years caught in confusion and legal hurdles trying to recover them. India has nearly INR 2 Lakh Cr total pool of unclaimed accounts, much of which is stuck in bank deposits, PFs, and insurance claims. 

“That’s the gap we have decided to fill with a simple, affordable and accessible way for middle-class Indians to plan their legacy before it’s too late,” Varghese said.

The founder added that the nudge to venture into this line of work comes from their not-so-pleasant experiences — the chaos that follows the demise of a person (missing documents, unknown assets, legal hurdles, and unclaimed funds).

For Vemulkar, however, it was all new, as he had spent over a decade in the US, studying and working in the financial services sector. 

When he returned to India in 2015, he worked in consumer-facing roles and later took on executive responsibilities at Naturo Food and Fruit Products Pvt Ltd. 

He eventually transitioned into entrepreneurship and cofounded OptiLife Innovations in 2017, which focussed on solving large-scale societal challenges through product and business model innovation.

Varghese, a chartered accountant with over 15 years of experience in the financial services industry, brought deep expertise in estate and succession planning, inheritance tax, and cross-border structures. 

As his career included stints at companies like EY and PwC India, he had seen firsthand how unstructured and inaccessible legacy planning was for most Indian families.

As they dug deeper, the scale of the problem became clear. They realised that there was no standard roadmap in the country for what to do when someone passes away. 

Therefore, the duo decided to launch a platform that solely focussed on will planning.

Yellow’s Complete Legacy Toolkit

What began as a will-making tool soon evolved into a comprehensive, end-to-end estate planning platform. 

While digital will creation remains Yellow’s flagship offering, the founders have expanded the platform to cover all critical legacy planning needs, including gift deeds, powers of attorney, family trusts, and advance medical directives. 

Via its dedicated offering called Yellow Smart, the startup also supports families through everything that follows after a death. 

This includes managing the transfer of assets such as bank accounts, provident funds, insurance claims, and real estate titles, processes that remain heavily bureaucratic and mostly offline in India. These post-demise services require multiple rounds of documentation, visits to government offices, and legal formalities like succession certificates or probate. 

Yellow addresses this pain point by offering a 360-degree solution. Its central in-house legal and operations team acts as a single point of contact for families, while coordinating execution through a nationwide network of 500+ empanelled local agents, lawyers, and chartered accountants.

The platform also caters to NRIs, who often face additional challenges managing Indian assets from abroad. 

As per the founder, Yellow provides transparent pricing, standardised timelines, and a centralised dashboard for families to easily track progress. 

Yellow’s services start at INR 1,499, with premium tiers up to INR 4,000. Available via both website and app, the service allows unlimited edits for 12 months. Higher-tier plans include video consultations with legal experts, while customer support is accessible through chat, call, or WhatsApp.

It also offers a prepaid annual subscription, allowing users to secure post-demise support for their families at no extra cost later. So far, the brand claims to have served over 20,000 users.

On the security front, the brand’s platform is hosted on Google Cloud, protected with industry-standard AES-256 encryption. 

Building Awareness In An Untapped Market

The startup generated INR 46 Lakh in its first official year of operations (FY24). Yellow operates in a growing segment that includes players like FreeWill, WillJini, AasaanWill, Khaitan & Co, Trust & Will and Legal Wills, among others.

According to cofounder Vemulkar, what sets Yellow apart is its comprehensive, technology-first approach to legacy planning. 

“We are the first and only fully digital will product in India. Most other services still rely on lawyer-drafted formats,” he said. 

What differentiates Yellow, as per the founder, is its full breadth of offering — from wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and gift deeds to post-demise services and on-ground execution.

While the market size and number of players in the space are growing, one of the biggest challenges remains adoption. 

“In India, the percentage of adults who’ve made a will is in the single digits. India also lacks an inheritance tax, which in other markets drives urgency, and there’s often cultural hesitation around talking about death or legacy planning due to superstition or discomfort,” Vemulkar added.

However, the startup is now seeing strong adoption from people in the age group of 35 to 50 years. It is also witnessing a growing number of NRIs among its key users.

To accelerate adoption, the brand is partnering with BFSI players, who already serve such customers. 

For instance, it has partnered with Acko, where Yellow’s offering is embedded in certain term life insurance policies. It is also forging alliances with companies like Even, Healthi, Basis, WisdomCircle, Moolah, and Scripbox, among others, to provide comprehensive solutions in financial and family wellness.

Going forward, the company wants to focus heavily on distribution and brand building. For this, its approach is content-led and education-first. 

Yellow also plans to expand its focus on the NRI segment and explore additional offerings tailored to senior citizens. 

For this, it will be using AI selectively to enhance the customer experience, particularly for senior users. For example, voice-based inputs and other assistive tools will be introduced to make the will-making process easier and all-inclusive.

With rising awareness and a clear product-market fit, Yellow is leading conversations around digital estate planning in India. However, given the brand is still in its early stages and mass adoption in this niche remains a work in progress, it’s too soon to predict how far it will scale.

[Edited by Shishir Parasher]