Nitin Gupta’s (co-founder of one of the largest Fintech electronic payment startups in India) FinTech startup Uni, received seed funding of $18.5Mn. The funding round was led by Lightspeed Partners and Accel Partners. Even though the startup is just 2 months old and has no product available, it has received ample funding. The investors have provided the funding on the basis of the startup’s mission.
The Team
Nitin Gupta (Co-Founder of Uni)The CEO Nitin Gupta has found many successful ventures. He co-founded “Khojguru” which focuses on discount coupons and left the company in 2015. Later on, he became the co-founder of “PayU India” and left the company in 2016 at a valuation of $500 Mn. He then went onto become the CEO of Ola Financial Services in 2017 and exited in May 2020. The company was valued at $250 Mn as per last year’s report. In August, he introduced a FinTech startup called “Uni”. He has been an active angel investor and has invested in companies like HappyJump. The other two members of this team are Prateek Jindal and Laxmikant Vyas. Prateek Jindal was the ex-CEO of Ola Money Postpaid. Whereas, Laxmikant Vyas was the head of risk for EMI cards business and head of data science at Bajaj Alliance.
Vision of the startup
The funding will be used to build the startup’s team. The CEO talked about how there has been a 3x expansion in digital payments over the past 5 years. However, the share of credit card payments have declined. The company wants to make the credit cards available to the underserved customers. They believe that the credit card market is an untapped industry in India. The company expects credit card users to grow from 58 Mn people to 200 Mn people. In a way, Uni is aiming to make the credit cards available to the people across various regions of the country.
India’s credit card situation
It is a generally accepted fact that availability of funds on credit is an important factor for a country’s economy to grow. This is especially true for emerging countries like India. The Indian banks have been trying to change people’s attitude towards credit cards by providing more offers, discounts, etc. than debit cards. Currently in India, for every credit card there are around 15 debit cards. Thus, the startup’s focus on making the credit cards available to the people staying in different parts of the country sounds like a promising proposition. Will it change the people’s perspective about credit cards completely, will be only seen when they launch their products and services.
This research article has been produced by Investocracy, a company focused on connecting startups from emerging markets with Japanese investors.
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