Top 5 Fintech Raises: InCred Finance, Notonthehighstreet, MobiKwik
Fintech funding is still an area of interest for investors worldwide, the only question is: Which startup stands out from the crowd this week? For the latest funding round, investors across
the globe have backed P2P lending services, online e-commerce marketplaces, “non-banking” financial services, and food services, which leads to BI’s top five fintech rounds of the week:
This “non-banking” financial service startup, based in Mumbai, raised $75 million in venture funding this week, led by co-chairmen of the Deutsche Bank board Anshu Jain. InCred was actually founded by a former Deutsche Bank executive named Bhupinder Singh, whose decades former banking experience enabled him to focus his company on SME loans, home loans, and education loans, though the service is not yet active. According to the company, however, they plan to leverage technology to provide more efficient credit and loan disbursal to its clients.
This Gurgaon, India-based mobile wallet raised $40 million in private equity funding this week, with the South African transaction service Net1 emerging as a lead investor. The company has been around since 2009, and is currently used by millions in India to complete P2P transfers, pay their bills, and buy products or goods across a variety of platforms.
UK-based ecommerce company Notonthehighstreet raised $27.5 million (or £21 million, if you’re across the pond) in a Series E round of funding, with the leading investor being German media company Hubert Burda Media. The online marketplace was founded for UK shoppers in 2006, and describes itself as an “alternative shopping channel,” similar to the popular U.S. service Etsy, where users can buy handcrafted goods from a variety of merchants. The UK platform hosts a selections of goods offered by sellers who have been accepted onto the site, unlike Etsy which does not require sellers to apply before setting up their store.
Swedish P2P lending service Lendify picked up $8.33 million in venture funding this week from three investors, including Back in Black and Jonas Nordlander. This brings its total funding up to $10.72 million, in two rounds of investing. The company offers one of the only marketplace lending services in Sweden, where its online credit platform enables easy P2P transfers between its clients.
Last but certainly not least, the international “peer to peer” online shopping platform Grabr raised $3.5 million in seed funding, led by RBV Capital, alongside several angel investors. Grabr does not act as a shopping marketplace so much as an intermediary, where it connects users who may not be able to find an item in their home country—such as a Swiss watch, for example—with others in that country who are able to purchase the item on their behalf. Those in the target country bid on a placed order, the shopper chooses a “traveler” among those bids to collect the order, and then the “traveler” purchases the item, delivers it to the shopper in a location selected beforehand, and is then paid out through Grabr. At the moment, Grabr has reportedly connected around 50,000 users in its market.
To learn more about fintech funding, join us at Bank Innovation Israel this November 1-3 in Tel Aviv. Learn more and register here.
