Nitin Gupta-led Uni scores $18.5 Mn seed fund; valuation nears $40 Mn

Fintech startup Uni has scooped up $18.5 million or Rs 137 crore in its maiden funding round led by Lightspeed Ventures India and Accel Partners India. 

In August, Entrackr had exclusively reported that the yet-to-be-launched startup was in advanced conversations to raise $18-20 million from the aforementioned venture capital investors.

According to Uni’s press statement, the startup led by PayU’s co-founder and Ola Financial’s former CEO Nitin Gupta, will utilise the seed capital to build a team and for marketing and working capital. While the company hasn’t revealed the exact business model, it is likely to focus on the underserved customer with different credit products. 

The company has allotted 3 equity shares and 36,470 Series A preference shares at a price of Rs 41,778 per share to raise around Rs 110.6 crore,  the company’s regulatory filings show.

Lightspeed and Accel have invested Rs 44.24 crore each while UAE-based Acorn Heavy Industries has invested Rs 22.12 crore. It appears that the company may receive the remaining amount in the coming days.

Following the allotment of shares, founder Gupta holds the largest stake at 46.48% followed by Accel and Lightspeed with 15.38% stake each and Acorn gets 7.69%. 

Uni’s other co-founder Prateek Jindal, a former executive at Ola, holds a 6.64% stake. The company has onboarded Bajaj Finserve’s Laxmikant Vyas as the third co-founder but his shareholding couldn’t be ascertained.

As per Fintrackr’s estimate, Uni has been valued at around $40 million in the seed round.

For Gupta, Uni is the third startup as a co-founder after PayU and Khojguru. For the past five years, he has been an active angel investor through his family office. His notable portfolio includes OfBusiness, BharatPe, Trell, Mosaic Wellness, GroMo, RippleHire and CoHo.