Decoding Jupiter’s latest round and its shareholding pattern

Jupiter, a neobanking platform founded by former PayU India MD Jitendra Gupta, had recently announced its $45 million Series B round led by Brazil-based Nubank.

While the company did not disclose much details about the funding round, Fintrackr has delved into details such as the name of all investors who participated in the round, the company’s valuation and its current shareholding pattern.

Jupiter has passed a special resolution to allot 36743 Series B preference shares at Rs 90,239 to raise Rs 331.6 crore or $45 million, according to the company’s regulatory filings.

Break up of Series B, valuation and shareholding

Lead investor Nubank has put in a little over $9 million followed by Global Founders Capital, a VC fund of Rocket Internet which invested around $7.3 million. Sequoia and Matrix Partners have invested around $6.5 million each. The remaining amount came from 3one4 Capital, Tanglin Ventures, Mirae Asset, Bedrock Capital, Greyhound Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, and angel investor and Pine Labs’ CEO Amrish Rau.

For the uninitiated, GFC consists of three funds: GFC and two Rocket Internet Capital Partners (RICP) funds.

"GFC invests with three funds / legal entities of which two have “Rocket Internet” in their legal name - but this is money from external institutional LPs, not from Rocket Internet," said Roel Janssen, Partner at GFC.

According to Fintrackr’s estimates, Jupiter has raised the fresh funds at an estimated valuation of Rs 2,150 crore or close to $300 million. The company has achieved a two-fold jump in its valuation in a matter of 15 months.

Following the fresh allotment of shares, promoters equity (majorly held by Gupta) has been diluted to 47.25% which compares favourably with many other startups at the Series B stage. Jupiter’s early backers Matrix and Sequoia hold 10.8% each whereas lead investor Nubank has acquired 3.17% stake in the company. Beenext and 3one4 Capital have 3.68% and 3.14% stake respectively.

Importantly, Rau is one of the largest individual investors in Jupiter, holding 2.95% stake in the company.

Jupiter’s biz model and rise of neobanking platforms

After being in stealth mode for more than a year, Jupiter started its product rolling out for select users in 2021. Currently, it offers four products to save money, bring discipline in expenses with insight, earn rewards on third party merchants and debit cards. According to the company, its beta app is currently available to more than 100,000 users who’d signed up to the waitlist and will be rolled out to the general public later this year.

Federal Bank is the company’s key banking partner along with NPCI and Visa. Of late, Federal Bank has been partnering aggressively with neo banks and fintech startups. 

Over the past couple of years, the Indian startup ecosystem has seen a rapid surge in the number of neobanking platforms. Jupiter has a long list of competitors which include Razorpay, Niyo, Open and EpiFi. Tiger Global-backed Open had recently kicked off its new round and raised around $62 million from Temasek, Google and others. In June, EpiFi also raised $12 million in its Series A round at a 3X premium in valuation.

Business-focused payment gateway cum neo banking platform Razorpay is one of the most valued fintech startups which raised its last round at $3 billion.

Update: The post has been updated to reflect that the external LPs of Global Founders Capital, a VC fund of Rocket Internet, have invested in Jupiter.