Global VCs invest $86m in India digital bank Jupiter

Japan’s MUFG Innovation Partners, Korea’s Mirae Asset Fund, and Indian VC firm 3one4 Capital also participated. They were joined by German investors Global Founders Capital and Rocket Internet, as well as Brazil’s Nubank.

It comes five months after a USD 45m Series B led by Nubank, Glboal Founders Capital, Sequoia Capital India, and Matrix Partners India. That round featured US-based Addition, Singapore's Tanglin Venture Partners and UK-based Greyhound Capital. Total funding comes to at least USD 57m, according to AVCJ Research, with previous backers including India’s Bedrock Ventures and Belgium’s Hummingbird Ventures.

Founded in 2019, Jupiter is a 100% digital bank that aims to focus strongly on customer experience and the personalisation of services. One of its first offerings is a savings account bundled with features aimed at simplifying money management. The product was co-created with a community of users that suggested features they wanted in a banking app.

Jupiter is the second project from CEO Jitendra Gupta, who co-founded and sold payments platform Citrus Pay to NASPERS-owned payments giant PayU for USD 130m in 2016. At the time, this was said to be the largest financial technology M&A transaction in India.

Gupta went on to be a managing director at PayU India and helped popularize the buy now, pay later category in the country through the development of LazyPay, the credit arm of Citrus.

“Sequoia Capital India has partnered with Jiten in every venture that he has started because the firm believes in his execution capabilities, resilience, and the ability to play the long game to re-imagine the future of financial services,” Mohit Bhatnagar, a managing director at Sequoia, said in a statement.

Jupiter’s features include real-time spend insights, tracking liquid assets across bank accounts, personalised savings goals, and sending and receiving funds via UPI, India’s government-build digital money transfer infrastructure.

The idea is to leverage a banking services market increasingly geared toward reviews, ratings, and recommendations. The company claims to have attracted 500,000 users since launching the service in July last year, with traction facilitated by a partnership with Federal Bank.

The fresh capital will be used to build out the team and technology platform, as well as launch various consumer-facing products targeted at technology-proficient Indian consumers. Jupiter is signing up 5,000 to 6,000 new users a day and aims to onboard 2m by December 2022.

“We are impressed by the roaring customer appeal of what [Gupta] and his team are building at Jupiter and their multi-decade vision to address financial needs of Indian consumers,” Sandeep Patil, a partner at QED, added.

“Executed right, digital banking services hold tremendous potential in India for increasing wealth and improving financial wellbeing of the middle class. Jupiter is on a sure-footed journey to realise this potential.”

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Financials
• Technology
• Expansion
• India
• Tiger Global Management
• Sequoia Capital
• Matrix Partners
• Beenext Capital Management
• Mirae Asset Private Equity
• 3one4 Capital
• Rocket Internet
• Fintech
• Financial Services