Investment app Groww raises $6.2mn in Series A funding led by Sequoia India

New Delhi: Groww, an online investment platform for millenials, has raised $6.2mn in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia India.

American seed accelerator Y Combinator, Propel Venture Partners and Kauffman Fellows also participated in the investment round, the company said in a statement.

The fresh funding comes after Groww, run by Nextbillion Technology Pvt. Ltd, raised $1.2 million in Pre-Series A led by Insignia Venture Partners, America’s Lightbridge Partners and Kairos fund. The company raised seed funding from CureFit founders Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori along with Y Combinator in January last year.

The capital will be utilised to build technology to scale and launch new products for better investment options to the young.

“We are seeing a strong growth in the Indian investor base which is fuelling the market need for a better and inexpensive investment platform like Groww," said Ashish Agrawal, principal at Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

The Bengaluru-based start-up aims to make investment simple and seamless and also offers direct mutual fund investment plans on it's platform. It facilitates this through its Android application, where it partners with all 34 mutual fund houses.

While more than 200 million people have investable income in India, only 10% actually invest, according to Groww.

Founded in April 2017 by ex-Flipkart employees Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh and Ishan Bansal, Groww plans to roll out other investment products including stocks.

"Millennials are increasingly moving towards financial products instead of real estate and gold," said Keshre, co-founder and chief executive officer at Groww. “We want to create a platform that has all possible investment solutions within a tech-enabled, easy-to-use interface - and all this, while providing the best-in-class user experience above all else."

Groww, a wealth management and mutual fund platform, competes with start-ups such as Nivesh.com, Mumbai-based Orowealth, Bengaluru-based Kuvera and Scripbox, among others.

Mutual fund startup Scripbox raised $21.4 million led by existing investor Accel Partners, along with participation from Omidyar Network, and NLI Investment Fund early this year. 

Groww claims to have one million registered users on it's platform and a growth of 37% month-on-month.

The wealth management and mutual fund industry witnessed the entry of players such as Paytm and Mobikwik through the acquisition of Mumbai-based startup Clear funds. Ex-ibibo founder Ashish Kashyap also ventured into wealth management with INDWealth last year. Sequoia recently invested in fin-tech startups Smallcase and insurance venture TurtleMint.