Atom Tech Founder’s Cross Border Payments Startup Hiwi Bags Funding

Cross-border fintech platform HiWi has raised INR 7.25 Cr in a pre-Seed funding round led by Unicorn India Ventures and the Unmaj Group Family Office.

Founded in 2022 by Dewang Neralla, Geeta Chauhan, and Ujwal Tamminedi, Mumbai-headquartered HiWi manages cross-border payments and financial transactions for individuals and businesses.

HiWi is a cutting-edge fintech platform designed to simplify international payments and financial transactions for both individuals and businesses. The platform specifically addresses the challenges commonly associated with cross-border remittances, such as confusing exchange rates, high forex margins, and cumbersome documentation requirements. 

With its first offering, HiWi is targeting students studying abroad by serving as a centralised hub for all their financial needs. The startup’s mobile app helps students to transfer funds, open foreign bank accounts, explore financing options, manage their card spending, and even earn loyalty points. 

Commenting on the fundraise, managing partner of Unicorn India Ventures, Anil Joshi, said “HiWi is combining the power of tech and addressing a much needed gap of facilitating cross border payments that are easier and convenient for both the parents and students. The company is starting with foreign admission but the product stack will be leveraged for other use cases post foreign admission, The future offerings canvas in this segment will give immense growth opportunities to HiWi.”

HiWi competes with the likes of Open, Paypal, Razorpay Global, and Paytm Global, among others.

Commenting on the expansion plans, the founder of HiWi, Dewang Neralla, said, “I would like to thank Unicorn India Ventures and Unmaj Group for having confidence in HiWi’s vision to make cross-border remittances accessible and convenient for all stakeholders. Although our initial focus is on education, we plan to expand our services to cater to SMEs, further streamlining and enhancing the remittance process.”

Before HiWi, Neralla founded India’s first multi-channel payments platform Atom covering PoS, online, IVR, and mobile, which was later acquired by NTT DATA in 2018. 

The startup claims to have facilitated transactions worth $300K to various geographies in its pilot phase. Looking ahead, HiWi plans to assist over 25,000 students in remitting $100 Mn by March 2025 and aims to onboard 5,000 educational consultants onto its platform.

The development comes at a time when cross-border payment transaction flows have witnessed a remarkable 13% increase from 2022, as per the Global Payments Report. The driving force behind this surge is global interoperability and initiatives such as immediate cross-border payments (IXB), and unified payments interface (UPI).

As per a report, the global cross-border payments market is projected to grow to a market size of $238.9 Bn by 2027.