WestBridge buys investment platform FundsIndia
WestBridge Capital has acquired a majority stake in FundsIndia, an online investment platform that offers access to mutual funds, public equities, and fixed deposit products, for an undisclosed sum.
The company previously received three rounds of VC funding. Investus Capital Partners – now Athera Venture Partners – committed USD 650,000 in 2010 and was then joined by Foundation Capital in a USD 3.6m rounds two years later. In 2015, Inventus, Foundation and Faering Capital put in USD 10.9m.
Srikanth Meenakshi, who founded FundsIndia with C.R. Chandrasekar in 2009, confirmed in a social media post that he had sold all his shares to WestBridge. Meenakshi and Chandrasekar vacated their executive roles in 2019 and moved on to establish other financial technology start-ups.
FundsIndia started out as a mutual fund and fixed deposit platform. It subsequently expanded into other product and service areas, such as mutual fund ratings, stockbroking, robo-advisory, and derivatives. Today, the company claims 2.5m users and INR 108bn (USD 1.3bn) in assets under management (AUM). It has processed more than 29m transactions.
“We created a platform that was envied by many, emulated by a few, and loved by hundreds of thousands of customers. I wish the new owners well as they continue the journey of, as we said when we started the company, ‘enriching India, one investor at a time,’” said Meenakshi.
WestBridge was established in 2000 and has USD 7.5bn in AUM. The founding team shuttered the business in 2006 and moved to Sequoia Capital India only to revive it six years later. WestBridge has backed 150 companies to date, investing out of evergreen funds. It typically pays USD 25m-USD 200m for minority stakes in companies, ideally second only to the founder in size.
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