Exclusive: Fintech Startup Bachatt Bags $4 Mn From Lightspeed, Info Edge Ventures

Recently launched fintech startup Bachatt has raised $4 Mn (over INR 34 Cr) in its seed funding round co-led by Lightspeed and Info Edge Ventures. While Lightspeed infused $2.8 Mn in the startup, $1 Mn was infused by the Sanjeev Bikhchandani-led VC firm. 

The round also saw Urban Company cofounder Abhiraj Bhal, L&T Finance’s Sunil Prabhune, OYO COO Abhinav Sinha and OYO CSO Maninder Gulati join the startup’s cap table.

Bachatt’s CEO and cofounder Anugrah Jain told Inc42 that the maiden funding round materialised at a pre-revenue stage. Bachatt will use the funds for full-fledged launch of its daily saving app, which is currently in beta mode.

Founded in November 2024 by Jain (ex-Boston Consulting Group partner), Ankur Jhavery (ex-OYO) and Mayank Agarwal (ex-Urban Company), Bachatt provides financial services solutions, with a focus on the self-employed category. Currently, its app lets users do daily SIP. The startup plans to add more financial products going ahead.  

It claims that its platform enables individuals earning INR 30K-70K per month to grow their income by saving only INR 100-200 daily. 

Tracing Bachatt’s Inception Story

During his decade-long stint with BCG, Jain worked closely with two leading NBFCs who scaled their combined books to INR 14,000 Cr in total. During this, the IIM-Ahmedabad graduate gained experience in dealing with the non-salaried, self-employed working Indians. 

This experience during 2014-2024, Jain claimed, helped him get a granular understanding on the ways these groups interact with financial instruments. In the process, he realised a gap in the financial services industry – lack of opportunities to save on a daily basis in a convenient and attractive way. 

“For the non-salary category or self-employed people, I believe that the Indian businesses have not really focussed on creating financial products conducive from them. Just like the salaried population, this category of customer also requires products that are coherent and congruent with their cash flows,” Jain added. 

While interacting with shop owners to gauge how they went ahead with their savings, Jain discovered that a large majority of such people rely on cooperative societies for their savings. 

As per Jain, about 30 Cr people are dependent on cooperative societies for financial products, like savings, credit, and insurance, and its current market size exceeds INR 15 Lakh Cr.

However, he said that cooperative societies offer low interest rates for savings and low flexibility. “Secondly, withdrawing your money before a stipulated time could bring with it a penalty. Despite this, these people choose to stay with them because of the trust and their savings requirement,” he added.

The idea of Bachatt originated from here to solve these problems. 

How Bachatt Aims To Disrupt The Market

Bachatt allows users to save as low as INR 51 on a daily basis or INR 1,001 per week via UPI in a debt mutual fund. The startup has partnered with ICICI Prudential and SBI Mutual Fund to enable the low-ticket investments. For this, it has registered with the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) to operate as a mutual fund distributor.

For context, a debt mutual fund pools money from investors and uses it to buy fixed-income securities like government bonds, corporate bonds, and treasury bills. Given the type of investments, debt mutual funds are generally considered to be one of the most stable  returns with lower risk investment instruments.

To enable savings, the startup was also initially considering two other types of investment vehicles – fixed deposits and digital gold.

However, it decided against fixed deposits as they don’t necessarily offer a low-ticket size or allow users to save on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, the reason behind not opting for digital gold offering was high competition and taxation. For instance, one of the more popular names in the digital gold space, Jar, posted a revenue of INR 50 Cr in FY24. 

It is also pertinent to note that digital gold startup GoldPe shut shop last year due to absence of a sustainable revenue stream, a flawed business model, and cash flow issues. 

After zeroing in on debt mutual funds, Bachatt brought in ICICI Prudential and SBI Mutual Fund as partners, two big names in the industry, so that it can gain users’ trust. Jain said that the cofounders’ professional experiences and networks helped them get the major entities on board. 

Bachatt’s Future Plans

Going ahead, the startup has set its eyes on gaining scale, which as per Jain, is the most important thing in the fintech sector.

Bachatt’s target segment of non-salaried and self-employed people is a huge category and the startup is banking on this to scale its user base to 2-3 Cr in the near future.

Jain said that the startup would look to stabilise the app interface in the first few months to provide a seamless user experience. Buoyed by the fresh capital, the startup will also double down on customer acquisition. 

After building a user base of a significant size, the startup would look to add more products to its offerings.

“In the fintech space, it is difficult to sell savings as a product to end users, making customer acquisition difficult. Once we manage to scale the product, we will look into expanding our offerings to include a bouquet of financial products. These may include partially secured lending, FDs, credit cards, among others,” Jain concluded.

[Edited by: Vinaykumar Rai]