Z47-backed Dezerv raises fresh funds of $40 million from existing investors

The fully primary round is co-led by Premji Invest and Accel’s Global Growth Fund, with participation from Elevation Capital and Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India). There were no secondary exits in this round.

The funding comes amid heightened venture capital interest in wealth-tech start-ups, as platforms across asset classes gain traction among India’s growing base of affluent investors. Companies including Stable Money, Neo Wealth Management, and Centricity, among others, have raised considerable amount of VC money over the past year.

Dezerv co-founder Sandeep Jethwani said the company plans to deploy the fresh capital to enhance client experience, deepen its technology stack and expand its investment offerings across asset classes.

Tech upgrade

To deepen its technology stack, the company plans to lean heavily into India’s account aggregator (AA) ecosystem to better customize solutions, expanding the 'One Model' platform to incorporate new asset classes, and providing a stronger user experience (UX).

Jethwani said the company is focusing on deepening asset classes such as infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs) and real estate investment trusts (ReITs), and the precious metals category of gold and silver in its multi-asset solutions.

From the fresh funds, Dezerv also plans to onboard 200 more relationship managers over the next 12 months. It currently has about 170 of them.

These initiatives, the company said, will accelerate its transition into a full-stack wealth manager to cater to entire families’ financial needs.

The platform serves clients in over 200 cities through offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune. Now, the company is primarily focused on going "much deeper in the existing 200 cities", targeting the large, underserved affluent category in tier-2 India.

The focus is on cities including Baroda, Nagpur, Mysore, Coimbatore, Lucknow, Kanpur and Jaipur, where wealth creation is driven by “SMBs and independent professionals like doctors", the co-founder said. Dezerv currently serves these markets digitally from its offices in tier-1 cities but said it is open to adding two or more cities.

Founded in 2021 by Jethwani, Sahil Contractor and Vaibhav Porwal, Dezerv's revenue in FY24 was ₹26.3 cr ($3.18 million) and it reported a net loss of ₹74.5 cr in the same fiscal year. The company is yet to report its FY25 financials.

Jethwani said his firm is focused on investments for growth "because the government is doing a lot of heavy lifting through the digital public infrastructure, it's incumbent on us to complement those technology spends."

The start-up's last funding round in July 2024 was a $32 million Series B led by Premji Invest at a valuation of around $207 million, which took its total capital raised to $100 million (over ₹850 crore).

The company did not disclose the valuation in the new round, though the co-founder noted there has been a markup.

Last week, Mint had reported that Z47, which has backed companies like Dezerv and Stable Money, is increasing its exposure to the wealth-tech segment and fintechs with a strong AI play. It is currently deploying capital from its fourth fund that closed at $550 million in 2023, with reserves to double down on existing portfolio companies, managing director Vikram Vaidyanathan said last week.