Amid DIY frenzy, Wealthy’s ₹130-cr fund raise fuels big bet on adviser-led wealth-tech

The Bengaluru-based startup has raised ₹130 crore in fresh funding, led by Bertelsmann India Investments, to deepen its artificial intelligence (AI)-led platform for mutual fund distributors (MFDs), with participation from existing investor Alphawave Global, new investor Shepherd’s Hill and a clutch of tech entrepreneurs.

Instead of going direct to consumers, Wealthy looks to sell software and AI tools to MFDs—independent mutual fund distributors who still intermediate roughly 80% of India’s retail equity wealth—so they can handle know-your-customer (KYC) checks, compliance and portfolio reviews faster, and sell investment products more efficiently while staying the primary advisers to their clients.

Rising investment flows

Over the past few years, household money flowing into financial assets has been rising steadily. Annual financial savings have climbed from about ₹24 lakh crore in FY20 to around ₹34.3 lakh crore now, according to estimates based on Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data. In roughly the same period, yearly flows into mutual funds have jumped from about ₹70,000–80,000 crore to nearly ₹4 lakh crore, a near sevenfold increase, as per the available industry data.

Yet, most of that money is still not coming in through do-it-yourself (DIY) investment apps such as Groww, Zerodha’s Kite and others.

“Close to 80% of mutual fund assets under management is still routed through human intermediaries, and even much of the remaining 20% that shows up as ‘direct’ is influenced by registered investment advisers whose role is not visible in headline industry data," said Aditya Agarwal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Wealthy.

Agarwal said this is the main reason Wealthy has chosen to build for mutual fund distributors, instead of trying to become another pure DIY investing app. “As India gets richer, people are shifting from being savers to investors, but as portfolios and life get more complex, time‑poor households increasingly prefer expert guidance," he said.

Many of those experts are still embedded in traditional institutions. “Today, a lot of advisors sit inside banks," Agarwal said. “We are seeing more of these bankers and relationship managers go independent, and when they do that, they suddenly need an institutional‑grade technology and product stack including research, access to multiple products, and client‑facing digital experiences which is what we provide," he added.

Other players offering solutions for advisers are AssetPlus, IIFL Securities, and Funds India.

Scaling the adviser tech stack

One of Wealthy’s biggest selling points for MFDs is how it handles know-your-customer (KYC) and client onboarding.

Agarwal explained that, a distributor would earlier collect paper KYC forms, wait seven to eight days for validation by the KYC Registration Agency (KRA). “What used to take a week on paper, doing KYC, submitting it, waiting for it to be processed and then sending an investment link, can now be done in a single meeting because AI verifies the PAN, photo and bank account in real time, so our distributors can finish KYC and take the first cheque in the same 60-minute conversation," he said. Wealthy offers SaaS tools for MFDs on the app

Wealthy today works with a little over 5,000 active distributors and manages around ₹5,000 crore in assets under management (AUM). Agarwal describes the startup as a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) platform, where mutual fund distributors are the primary customers and end-investors are reached through them.

On the retail side, he said over 85% clients continue to invest regularly even two years after coming on to the platform, based on internal cohort data.

Agarwal said Wealthy is, at its core, a distribution business. Mutual fund houses and insurance companies pay a trail or commission to the platform for every sale, which is then shared with distributors.

The valuation at the latest fund raise has not been disclosed. The previous valuation at Series A was ₹400 crore, and according to Agarwal, it is now at least 2x that amount.

Wealthy’s revenue from operations rose to about ₹25 crore in FY25 from ₹14.5 crore in FY24, according to its financial statements filed with the Registrar of Companies. Over the same period, total expenditure grew 41% year-on-year to ₹70 crore from ₹49.5 crore. The Alpha Wave-backed company reported a net loss of ₹35 crore in FY25, wider than the ₹24 crore loss it posted in the previous year.

Big ambitions

The company plans to use the new capital to deepen its technology stack, expand into tier‑2 and ‑3 cities, and aggressively grow its distributor network. Wealthy has set an internal goal of onboarding around 50,000 mutual fund distributors and scaling to ₹1 lakh crore in AUM, which would be roughly eight times its current distributor base and about 20 times its present AUM.

Agarwal said the firm aims to hit that milestone by the end of the decade. “We have set a goal of getting to ₹1 lakh crore of AUM by around 2030, maybe a year earlier," he said. “In this business, whatever you build keeps compounding, because the same distributors keep adding money from existing clients, bring in new clients and benefit from market returns, and on top of that we keep adding more distributors, so the network itself becomes the growth engine."

Rohit Sood, partner at Bertelsmann India Investments, told Mint that less than 15% of Indian households have any exposure to the equity markets today, and he believes the number will move closer to 60% and catch up with developed markets in time.

Wealthy will compete with large, do‑it‑yourself investment platforms such as Groww and Zerodha for wallet share and attention.

Groww’s parent, Billionbrains Garage Ventures, has just launched a ₹6,632 crore initial public offering, including a ₹1,060 crore fresh issue. It recently reported a ₹1,109 crore in revenue for Q2FY26 on profits of ₹471 crore.

On the other hand, Zerodha, India’s largest discount broker, saw its revenue from operations fall to ₹8,847 crore in FY25 from ₹9,993 crore in FY24. Its net profit also fell 23% to ₹4,237 crore in FY25 from ₹5,496 crore a year earlier. Despite this, Zerodha continues to run an exceptionally strong balance sheet. The broker is sitting on cash and bank balances of about ₹22,769 crore as of FY25, while its total current assets are at roughly ₹35,719 crore.

Sood of Bertelsmann India, however, argued that Wealthy is not playing the same game as these DIY apps. He said while DIY investing will remain an important part of the market, it usually ends up being a smaller slice compared with advisory once a country’s wealth deepens. “Many first‑time investors may start on digital trading platforms, but often move to structured, adviser‑led setups as their portfolios and financial lives get more complex, a pattern seen to play out in markets such as the US, China, Singapore and Australia," he added.