Exclusive: Groww to foray into neobanking

With 20 million registered users and close to $400 million in investment, Groww is emerging as a worthy challenger of Zerodha. It’s probably the fastest startup to record over a 10X jump [from $250-300 million to $3 billion] in valuation within 14 months in India.

Besides stock trading, the company also enables mutual funds and fixed deposits investments. Now, the company is gearing to launch a neo-banking platform, according to three people aware of the details of the plan.

“Groww believes that a neo-banking offering will make it a more holistic platform for users. The company wants to become a one-stop solution for banking and investment,” said one of the sources requesting anonymity as plans are yet to be made public.

According to these sources, the move will enable more user stickiness at Groww.

“The expansion is starting with neobank and in the long haul the company would also add lending,” said the second source who also wished to remain unnamed.

With the neo-banking, Groww will start competing with Jitendra Gupta’s Jupiter and B Capital and Alpha Wave Incubation-backed Fi. 

Queries sent to Groww on Friday didn’t elicit any response. We will update the story as and when the company responds.

A Neo-bank will probably help acquire more users for its stock trading, mutual funds and crypto investments on its platform.

The company is also set to offer investments in virtual currencies, said sources.

After becoming the first privately funded startup in this segment to attain unicorn status, the company had recently raised another round at a $3 billion valuation. On Thursday, Groww’s closest rival Upstox also raised a new round at $3.4 billion valuation. Zerodha of course is bootstrapped, to everyone’s surprise even today. 

Entrackr had exclusively reported the development.

Update: We have removed a quote from a source in the story that mentioned the tight margins in the stock-brokerage business.