Good morning.
Bilt Rewards will announce today that it’s teaming up with Walgreens on a first-of-its-kind nationwide pharmacy benefits program that includes rewarding customers who automatically apply flexible spending accounts (FSA) and health savings accounts (HSA) dollars to eligible purchases. Much like Bilt’s partnerships with restaurants, fitness studios and rideshare services, the Walgreens tie-up is another perk for a company that rewards renters for their payments in more than 4.5 million homes and homeowners in an additional one million condos.
This is the biggest product announcement of the year for the popular neighborhood rewards program. It’s also proof that Bilt is building a business model around loyalty that is less like a traditional credit card points program and more a platform like Airbnb or Uber that connects and creates community.
CEO Ankur Jain launched Bilt in 2019 to let renters earn points on their monthly payments without the usual transaction fees and create a path to home ownership by allowing users to build their credit rating and apply points to a future down payment or other perks. As the largest payments platform in the residential space, Bilt gives landlords new ways to incentivize customers, and lets consumers choose rewards they’ll value. Says Margette Hepfner, COO of Willow Bridge Property Company, which manages 210,000 homes across the country: “I liked that he’s solving for a consumer need, instead of trying to find something that was attractive to a building owner or operator.”
I first met Ankur about 15 years ago when he was a Wharton student who’d cofounded the Kairos Society, a community for student founders trying to solve big problems. I was a ‘mentor’ at the Kairos Global Summit, which brought together 50 top student startups every year to vie for seed capital and mentoring. Kairos later evolved to be more of venture fund that Jain co-led; he also launched an app called Humin that he sold to Tinder, as well as a real-estate startup called Rhino. Bilt was created to bring together renters and property owners, which was no easy task, given the patchwork of proprietary systems and loyalty programs. That growing foundation then allowed it to “build a community of merchants around people’s homes.”
The vision attracted former American Express CEO Ken Chenault to become the company's chairman and investor through General Catalyst, where he's now chairman and managing director. Chenault told me that he'd tried to create a local ‘city cards’ loyalty program at Amex in the 1990s but the ecosystem was premature. “We didn’t have enough connective tissue to create that neighborhood loyalty platform,” says Chenault, who was instrumental in getting Bilt’s team focused around its core mission to create “a comprehensive loyalty program that rewards you in your home and neighborhood.” (Says Jain: "I've never had someone with such a wealth of knowledge in the space that we're building as a daily partner in the company.")
As the payment system to a deep network of property owners and operators around the country, Bilt can now tap a large customer base to benefit local merchants, property owners and customers in new ways. That’s certainly attractive to Walgreens chief product & growth officer Bala Visalatha, who is especially excited to “tap into households who are in the transitionary phase of their life” as renters, exposing them to what Walgreens has to offer and build a relationship over time.
Jain, meanwhile, takes inspiration from mentors like Chenault and his father, entrepreneur Naveen Jain. “My dad always says that most great companies that fail died because of indigestion, not starvation…We could be the largest commerce player in dining and in local health care and local transportation.” But, he adds, you build community one partner at a time.
More news below.
Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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