Indian fintech player Groww raises $21m

Existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Y Combinator also participated. It comes nine months after a $6.2 million Series A that also featured US investors Kauffman Fellows and Propel Venture Partners. Seed-stage backers include Singapore’s Insignia Ventures Partners, UK-based LightTower Partners, and Kairos, a US-based VC.

“We backed the Groww team because we believe in their mission,” Micky Malka, founder of Ribbit, said in a statement. “They have built the most trusted product in this space and are on the path to create a category-defining product.”

Groww provides a desktop and mobile-accessible platform that facilitates commission-free investments in mutual funds. It claims to have more than 2.5 million users across India, 60% of whom live outside the country’s six largest cities. Ease of use and effective customer engagement are high priorities, as two-thirds of users are said to be first-time investors.

The company is planning to expand this model into a more comprehensive investment services offering. The fresh capital will be applied to hiring new staff across the engineering, product and growth teams, with a view to roughly doubling overall headcount to more than 200 people. A significant portion has also been earmarked to build “super scalable infrastructure for investing.”

Ribbit has emerged as a key fintech investor in India, having contributed in recent weeks to a $50 million Series B for digital payments player BharatPe and a $75 million Series C for online transactions gateway Razorpay. Sequoia also backed both BharatPe and Razorpay, the latter of which has also received funding from Y Combinator.

Last month, Tala, a US-based microlending services provider backed by Ribbit, raised $110 million as part of an Indian expansion.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Financials
• Technology
• Early-stage
• India
• Sequoia Capital
• Financial Services