FamPay Bags $4.7Mn Seed Funding To Build Fintech Platform For Teenagers

Bengaluru-based fintech startup FamPay, on Thursday (March 12), announced a $4.7Mn seed funding round from Y Combinator, Venture Highway, Sequoia India and Global Founders Capital (GFC).

Founded by recent graduates of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, Kush Taneja and Sambhav Jain, FamPay is currently building a payments network which will specifically cater to teenagers in India.

Twitch cofounder Kevin Lin, Robinhood cofounder Vladimir Tenev, CRED founder Kunal Shah, Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau also participated in the round. With the funding, FamPay is planning to add more members to its engineering team to enhance its technology stack.

During the college years, Taneja and Jain realised that banks or schools aren’t much doing for students to teach them personal finance. To tap this segment, the founders decided to launch a financial product which will cater to Indian teenagers.

With FamPay, anyone can get a debit card without the need to set up a bank account. Using this card, anyone can pay for products and services both online and offline. Parents can top up the FamPay account of their children and let them spend sped the way they want but under supervision. Users can also send money through UPI on the mobile app.

Cofounder Sambhav Jain said that empowering teenagers with their own accounts can create a new network of users and open numerous opportunities in the market. Further, Jain believes that there’s a huge scope for innovation and redefining how payments are done and that’ll happen as FamPay’s user grows along with the company.

FamPay said that the company will be launching its product soon. For issuing cards, FamPay has partnered with IDFC Bank. While users get a virtual card instantly on signing up, the physical cards can be ordered through the app.

Before launching the final product, FamPay had run an experiment in August 2019 with an Android app on the Google Play Store. The startup claims that it got over 20K installs within seven days of launch and ranked as the fifth most trending app on Google Play Store. FamPay has added social elements such as a feed where users can post updates to boost engagement.

Fintech startups have continued to dominate the funding charts in 2020 after featuring among the top three most-funded sectors for 2019.

Last week, Bengaluru-based fintech startup Karbon Card has raised $2 Mn seed funding from Cred founder Kunal Shah, and Citrus Pay cofounders Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta. Amrish Rau is Pine Labs’ new CEO, whereas Gupta has founded Jupiter, which is looking to launch its neobanking services soon.

The funding spree in the fintech sector in recent months includes the likes of Gurugram-based fintech startup Chqbook, which raised $5 Mn in its Series A funding round led by Aavishkaar Group’s equity investment arm Aavishkaar Capital. Last month, serial entrepreneur Shailaz Nag’s new fintech venture Dot had bagged $8 Mn in seed funding.