Upwardly.in raises seed funding from a group of investors

Upwardly, a financial services startup has raised an undisclosed amount of seed round from a clutch of investors, as first reported by financial daily Mint.

The name of the investors include  Sreeram Iyer, chief operating officer at ANZ Bank; Suvo Sarkar, senior executive vice president and group head of retail banking and wealth management at Emirates NBD; and Anita Gupta, head of equity strategy at Emirates NBD and Likemind Ventures.

The startup plans to use the funds to expand service offerings, technology development and team augmentation.

“We think that there is a big gap between people’s savings and aspirations, and that is what we are helping bridge. A lot of consumers end up planning for short-term goals such as vacations, buying a car, or buying a home,” Mehta said.

Founded by Prateek Mehta, Prithvi Raj Tejavath, Shashank Agrawal and Vivek Agarwal in December 2015, Upwardly.in is a personal finance and wealth management platform which does a research in mutual funds and offers services in tax-saving ELSS, along with other investment products. It offers the services in English, Hindi, Telugu and Gujarati.

In the past few months, the financial startup ecosystem, including wealth and expense management, financial advisory, and investment platforms have managed to raise capital.

Last month, Mumbai-based personal finance startup Fincash.com has raised $100,000 in its first round of funding from a clutch of individual investors.

Bengaluru-based Stockal Software Pvt. Ltd, which runs an app-based investment advisory service, has raised its second round of angel funding from a clutch of investors.

A host of other online investment platforms, including Fisdom, Goalwise, Scripbox, and Tauro Wealth, have received funding in the recent past.