Jar Raises $32 Mn At $200 Mn Valuation From Tiger Global, Others

SUMMARY

Rocketship.vc, Third Prime, Stonks, Force Ventures and existing investors including Arkam Ventures and WEH also participated in the round

The startup plans to use the funds to venture into lending and insurance segments while improving the distribution of its services through the gamified app

Jar has previously raised $4.5 Mn in Pre-Series A round in September 2021

Investment startup Jar, which allows users to save via investing in digital gold, has raised $32 Mn in Series A round at a valuation of $200 Mn. The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from Rocketship.vc, Third Prime, Stonks, Force Ventures and existing investors including Arkam Ventures and WEH.

Several angels including Klarna’s Victor Jacobsson, Ali Capital’ Suleman Ali, Sila Money’s Shamir Karkal, Ledger Prime’s Joel John among others also participated in the round.

The startup plans to use the funds to venture into lending and insurance segments while improving the distribution of its services through the gamified app.

Founded by Nischay AG and Misbah Ashraf, Jar operates an app that allows users to invest in gold and get started within seconds. The app works with Paytm to set up a recurring payment and is also the first to use UPI 2.0’s recurring payment support. Users can withdraw the physical gold or liquidate it.

Users can set up any amount between INR 1 to INR 500 for daily investments, alternately, the app also allows users to invest round-up amounts from spending. For example, if a person spends INR 96 on a food order, they can build wealth by investing the INR 4 (to round up to INR 100, the nearest 10th) in digital gold — the Jar app is able to spot by looking at the SMSes, accruing small sums of money each time a user makes a transaction,

The current funding comes at the heels of the startup raising $4.5 Mn in Pre-Series A round in September 2021, to further build the team and develop more products. Since its launch eight months ago, the app has amassed 4 Mn users, as the startup said.

Not just Jar, the investment tech sector, in general, has seen rapid growth since the beginning of the pandemic. Indian investors opened 14.2 Mn new Demat accounts opening in FY21 — a 3X year-on-year growth.

The pandemic has accelerated the investment tech sector as people began paying more attention to their finances. The Indian investment tech market is poised to grow to over $60 Bn by FY25, from its current market size of $20 Bn.

According to Inc42’s Funding Report 2021, fintech startups raised $7.9 Bn in funding. Out of the total 280 deals reported in fintech, about 19.3% or 54 deals were recorded by the investment tech sector. The sector attracted $1 Bn Mn in funding.

Major players, investment firms in the segment include Groww, Zerodha, Paytm Money, Upstox, ETMONEY, Amazon-backed Smallcase and other traditional brokerage firms.