$40M raised by Indian Fintech Zolve to be the Global Financial Service Provider

The Bangalore headquartered neo-banking startup, Zolve works to help out the U.S. immigrants to gain financial services. 

A high profile Indian entrepreneur, Raghunandan G established this platform in 2020 after solding his previous startup TaxiForSure, a taxi aggregator to Ola cabs, the ride hailing giant, for $200 million in 2015. 

It is not a banker or a lender company but a cross border fintech that allows the fair access to the international financial product. 

The global financial service provider, Zolve announced that it has raised a new funding round of $40 million Series A that valued the neobanking fintech at $210 million. This round’s funding brings the total raised value to $55 million. 

The dominator of this round was a venture capital firm that invested in late stage internet companies, The DST Global, and got the support from Alkeon Capital and Tiger Global. And some of the existing investors also participated including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Accel. 

Raghunandan G said in a statement that credit cards are their basic value proposition and other than that, the customer will get a local bank account along with a debit card. 

He said that they never expected that their customer would deposit money to their bank accounts and they thought that even if, by chance, someone deposits any money, it would just be some hundred or thousand dollars. But what they are noticing is that, people are depositing thousands of dollars and using it as a primary bank account for them and they are currently sitting on $2 million of deposits. 

And as a result of that, Zolve decided to broaden their offerings to the foreign nationals from several nations from next year, added by Raghunandan G. 

Currently, Zolve works with Indian and US banks to seamlessly access the consumers with financial products. 

As Raghunandan G saw the struggle of getting a credit card from local banks by thousands of working professionals and students that leave from India to US for work and studies, he decided to launch an easy going financial service provider for Indians. 

He told Techcrunch in an Interview that it has expanded its credit cards to over 2 thousand customers. 

Customers are extensively using the services of Zolve and paying on time and the startup has also captivated demands from individuals who had immigrated from other nations like the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Germany. 

Aim to Deploy the Fresh Capital

The company aims to use the fresh capital in scaling the financial services of its platform, expand its product suite. They also plan to expand their  team in an aggressive manner because the headcount of the company was just 5 in starting which has grown to 100 this year but now, the company aims to cross 150. 

Some of the Investors of this Round’s Funding 

DST Global was the lead investor of this round, a 2009 founded venture capital and private equity firm that invests mainly in late stage internet firms and was the main investor of this round. This is the largest and dominant venture firm of the world that has an estimated $50 billion under management in assets. 

Lightspeed Venture partner, who is an existing investor of Zolve is a global venture firm. 

A partner of Lightspeed Venture Bejul Somaia said that there is a direct and meaningful impact of the access to tailored and financial products, on people’s lives. He said that they are highly excited to have invested in Zolve and to support the vision of Zolve’s CEO, which is to bring world class financial services experience and products to US immigrants and other markets. 

Conclusion

The global financial service provider, Zolve that is headquartered in Bangalore, India has raised $40 million in Series A funding round. This has valued the company at $210 million. The total raised by the company since inception has come to $55 million. DST Global was the lead investor of this round and got the support from Alkeon Capital and Tiger Global along with the participation from existing investors, Accel and Light Venture Partners. The company aims to use the fresh capital in scaling the financial services of its platform, expand its product suite and in aggressive hiring for the company.

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