Wealth Management Startup Kuvera Raises $4.5 Mn From Eight Roads

Bengaluru-based wealth management startup Kuvera has raised $4.5 Mn (INR 31.2 Cr) in Series A funding from UK-based venture capital company Eight Roads.

This investment by Eight Roads was made through its newly formed Fintech Strategic Investments team being led by Alokik Advani. The team has been established to build and invest in fintech businesses, with strategic adjacencies to its parent company Fidelity International.

This is the team’s first investment in India. Prior to this, the team had also invested in UK-based savings and investment platform Moneybox.

Kuvera was founded in 2016 by Gaurav Rastogi, Neelabh Sanyal and Mayank Sharma. It offers ‘free-to-use’ web-based direct mutual fund investment platform. It provides more than 100,000 users with access to a range of investment tools designed to help them save money and reach their financial goals. According to the company, currently, it manages more than INR 3,000 Cr in mutual fund investments.

The startup also offers tailored, goal-based financial advice to its users. The wealth management platform also allows its users to easily switch from regular mutual funds to direct mutual funds, lowering the cost of investing.

According to the startup, the funds will be utilised to build its team and expand its product portfolio. This investment deal came at a time when the startup is looking to increase its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to help its customers invest better in a way that helps them secure better returns.

Kuvera is also looking to enhance its product and service range to reduce the cost of accessing multiple financial products through a single digital platform.

Kuvera had raised a total of $500K in its seed funding round in March 2018. The round saw participation from a clutch of angel investors including Baskar Subramanian (cofounder, Amagi Media Labs); Saket Kumar (managing director, Swank Capital), Gaurav Suri (managing director, Livermore Capital) and Ankit Kesarwani of New Vernon Investment Management.

“With Eight Roads as an investor, we will continue to innovate and expand our advisory offering across financial products. We have an exciting line-up of product releases for this year and are looking to expand our team to build these out even faster,” said Gaurav Rastogi, founder and CEO of Kuvera.

This development comes in at a time when the wealth management sector has been garnering a lot of attention from fintech players, investors and consumers. According to a 2018 IBEF report, the Indian mutual funds industry has recorded high growth in assets under management (AUM). The total AUM of the industry was recorded at $375.9 Bn (INR 2.52 Tn)  between April to August 2018.

A similar report by Deloitte India estimates digital investing (using mobile and web application) to grow at more than double the rate of overall investment in mutual funds. It predicts digital-invested AUM to grow by around 80% from approx INR 250 Bn in 2018 to INR 450 Bn in 2019.

Online wallet companies such as PhonePe, Paytm have also recently upped their game to strengthen their presence in the wealth management space. In February, Paytm Money integrated with Paytm bank to allow its users to make mutual funds investments through its payments bank.