Online mutual fund investment platform Scripbox has raised $21 million Series C round led by Accel Partners. Existing investor Omidyar Network also participated in the round.
The round seems to be strategic, as per data research platform paper.vc.
In June 2016, the company had raised an undisclosed amount in Series B round. Accel Partners had led $2.5 million Series A round in 2015.
The fintech platform simplifies mutual fund investing by weeding out the confusion created by many options. According to its website, Scripbox has executed 2 million transactions and about Rs 900 crore invested by its user base. It has a presence in about 1250 cities.
Further, it claims that 70 per cent of retail investors are first-time buyers of mutual fund schemes. Chosen by the algorithm, Scripbox suggests best mutual fund investment to investors with bank-grade security and easy tracking of the portfolio.
Scripbox competes with a slew of startups including Piggyy, Fisdom, and Groww along with biggies – Paytm Money and ET Money. Last year, Groww had raised $1.6 million in a pre-series A round from Insignia Venture Partners, America’s Lightbridge Partners, and Kairos fund.
Quona Capital and Sama Capital had invested $3.8 million in Fisdom in 2017.
Financial products and insurance are emerging sectors and expected to be the next big thing in India. The online penetration of financial service like a mutual fund is pretty low that makes the sector a hotspot for startups in the segment.
Among many financial services, the mutual fund industry alone is expected to grow from current 20 million investors to over 50 million investors in the next five years.
Currently, most of the online wealth management platforms are still in the early stage. In a time when new and innovative products are getting rapidly accepted by users, it will be interesting to see how Scripbox and other firms grow in 2019 and beyond.
Update: We have update headline to reflect that Accel Partners has led the round. The earlier version of the post mentioned that Trusted Insight led the round which was incorrect. We regret the error.
