InCred may invest in personal finance management app Walnut

InCred Finance, a non-banking financial company backed by private equity firms and former Deutsche Bank co-CEO Anshu Jain, is reportedly in talks to invest around Rs 50 crore ($7.3 million) in personal finance management app Walnut.

The Economic Times, citing two people it didn’t name, said InCred is looking at “extending its investments in new-age companies”. It added that Walnut is trying to raise funds from others investors as well.

Email queries sent by TechCircle to both InCred and Walnut did not elicit a reply till the time of publishing this article.

In August last year, VCCircle had reported that InCred was on the lookout for acquisitions.

“We are looking to shell out Rs 50-100 crore for acquisitions in the microfinance category and will buy one-two startups in the wheels financing segment for about Rs 20-30 crore,” InCred founder and CEO Bhupinder Singh had told VCCircle at the time.

Singh, a former senior Deutsche Bank executive, incorporated the company in 2016 and raised about Rs 600 crore in August 2016 from Jain, Manipal Group managing director Ranjan R Pai, Landmark Holdings founder Gaurav Dalmia, IDFC PE, Alpha Capital and Paragon Partners.

The Mumbai-based company offers loans for personal and small business needs, affordable homes and education with a ticket size that ranges from Rs 50,000 to Rs 10 crore. The lender claims to have 13 branches and around 300 employees in 10 cities.

The Walnut app reads text messages on the phone and categorises them to give graphic analysis periodically. It also generates visualisation of monthly expenditure and facilitates debit card-to-debit card peer-to-peer (P2P) payments without the need of bank account details.

The company, run by Thumbworks Technologies Pvt. Ltd, was founded in October 2014 by Amit Bhor and Patanjali Somayaji. Both of them worked at Motorola Mobility earlier.

According to filings made with the Registrar of Companies, Walnut received a seed investment of $7.9 million from SAIF Partners and Sequoia Capital in May 2015.

In October 2016, Walnut named Anurag Sinha its co-founder and chief business officer.