Groww, the wealth management platform that targets millennials and first-time investors, has scooped up $30 million in its Series C round of funding led by Y Combinator’s growth-stage investment fund Continuity.
Groww’s existing investors, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital and Propel Venture Partners also participated in the round. With fresh capital infusion, the Bengaluru-based startup has raised close to $60 million across five institutional rounds.
In a statement, Groww said the fresh fund will be deployed in strengthening its tech infrastructure and hiring in engineering talents across product and growth. A portion of the capital raised will also be used for promoting its financial education initiative across India.
According to an ET report, Groww has also given partial exit to some of its early backers including Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori. Entrackr could not independently verify the components of the secondary transaction immediately.
Founded by ex-Flipsters Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, Ishan Bansal and John Francis, Groww offers a platform for first-time investors and millennials to make investments in mutual funds via systematic investment plans (SIPs), digital gold, stocks and has plans to launch international equities to allow investments in US stocks.
Till date, it claims to have amassed over 8 million registered users for its mutual fund offering whereas more than 200K customers have bought stocks from the three-year-old platform
Around a dozen startups in the online investing space are offering mutual funds or stocks, or both. These include INDMoney, ETMoney, Scripbox, Zerodha, 5Paisa, Upstox and Paytm Money. Overall, offerings of Groww are similar to its competitors, especially INDMoney.
Recently Paytm Money said that the monthly investment volume in SIP has increased by 143% on its platform in the last financial year or FY20. In its two years of operations, Paytm Money also claims to have reached a customer base of 6.6 million. In comparison, Zerodha has around 3 million users.
