SUMMARY
Steadview Capital had invested $30 Mn in INDwealth in an earlier round
INDwealth will use the funds towards building its technology and R&D
It will also invest to boost customer acquisition and marketing programmes
Gurugram-headquartered fintech startup INDwealth has raised $15 Mn in a funding round from New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global. The investment comes nearly 10 months after INDWealth raised $30 Mn from Steadview Capital.
The company said it would be using the fresh funds to execute and scale the INDwealth platform. It also plans to ramp up development on its technology platform including artificial intelligence, research and development and the advisory team as well as invest towards innovative customer acquisition and marketing campaigns.
Founded in 2018 by serial entrepreneur Ashish Kashyap, Pratiksha Dake and Varun Bhatia, INDwealth is a personal financial advisory agent, which offers advice across asset classes, loans, and tax management. It enables consumers to organise and track their wealth across investments, loans, expenses and taxes and in turn get machine learning-driven recommendations to improve their financial future and cash flows.
“We are excited to partner with Ashish and the INDwealth team, who we think have the strategic vision to transform the wealth management industry in India. We believe INDwealth has a tremendous opportunity for growth by delivering low-cost, transparent, and personalized financial management services,” said Scott Shleifer, partner, Tiger Global Management.
The first version of the app was launched in April 2019. The platform has also enrolled certified “Wealth Advisors” that get mapped to every user family. The company also launched a Wealth Advisor facing web application thereby creating communication and feedback loops between the customers and advisors.
Ashish Kashyap, founder and CEO of INDwealth said, “We are excited that our recent launch has been validated by the target customers and at the same time proves our thesis for a need for a machine learning-based transparent & full-stack wealth management platform. The opportunity is massive as managed wealth is under-penetrated.”
Talking to Inc42 earlier Kashyap said INDwealth will have an initial focus on the affluent and high net worth individual (HNI) category, given the complexities in this segment, and will later look at providing its services to the middle segment of the pyramid.
Ravi Mehta, founder and CIO of Steadview Capital, said, “INDwealth has made rapid progress in the wealth management space in India leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence, and we look forward to supporting Ashish and his team in their journey to help customers manage their financial future.”
In September 2017, Kashyap, the founder and CEO of Ibibo, had resigned as president and cofounder of online travel aggregator MakeMyTrip (MMT). In October 2016, MakeMyTrip announced its merger with smaller rival Ibibo Group in a $720 Mn deal, valuing the combined entity at $1.8 to $2 Bn.
With his experience in the ecosystem, Kashyap had recently addressed budding entrepreneurs at Inc42 F.O.U.N.D.E.R.S. meetup and had talked about his experience in fundraising “It’s about identifying the right investors for you at the right time.” He also added that too often founders spend too much time thinking about whether a particular investor is a right fit for the company, but in fact, they just need some funding to gain momentum and take on the market.
According to industry estimates, there are about 150K families in India with a wealth of $3.56 Mn (INR 25 Cr) or more. This is expected to rise to 500K by 2025. Cumulative wealth will increase to $7.1 Tn (INR 500 Tn) by 2025 from now. Other notable startups in this space are Paytm Money, Times Internet-backed ETMoney, Fisdom, a personal wealth management startup; Tauro Wealth, a stock market investments platform; Tipbazaar; and Scripbox, among others.
