With $11 Mn round in Fisdom, PayU forays into wealth management

Digital payment firm PayU has been undertaking several structural changes as well as its expansion and investment plans in India and Southeast Asia.

Starting from multiple top layer exits, the Naspers-owned company had recently made new appointments to strengthen its leadership team and pushed up lending business and forayed into the SEA region.

Now, the payment firm has announced its foray into the wealth management segment with $11 million funding round in Fisdom. Existing investors Saama Capital and Quona Capital also participated in the round.

The four-year-old Bengaluru-based startup works with banking partners, including Bank of Baroda, Allahabad Bank, Karnataka Bank, and City Union, to offer a wealth management platform with over 5,000 mutual fund products.

With the investment, PayU will eventually allow consumers to invest in mutual funds, pension funds, insurance funds, digital gold, among others.

The move will bring PayU on the same table where digital payments firms Paytm, Mobikwik and PhonePe have already acquired significant market share.

According to PayU India chief executive Anirban Mukherjee, the company will work towards providing a broader fintech platform around core payments and lending business.

Since the acquisition of consumer-facing payments startup Citrus Pay in 2016, PayU has made several bets on Indian startup in payments and digital lending space such as Wibmo, Paysense and ZestMoney.

In July, it also acquired Singapore’s largest digital payments firm Red Dot Payments to mark its entry in SEA region. Besides, it had invested Rs 50 crore in its non- banking financial subsidiary PayU Finance.

Coming back to Fisdom, the Subramanya SV and Anand Dalmia founded company serves over 200,000 active customers in metros as well as tier II and III towns. 

The startup had earlier raised $3.84 million in a Series B round in November 2017 and picked up $1.1 million round in 2016.

Apart from the companies mentioned above, ETMoney, Orowealth, Cube Wealth, Kuvera and Scribox, solely focus on wealth management products.