Livspace co-founder, others back fintech startup GroMo

Gurugram-based fintech platform GroMo has raised Rs 4 crore ($580,000 at current exchange rate) in a seed funding led by angel investors, namely, Livspace co-founder Ramakant Sharma and AngelList India partner Utsav Somani.

The company plans to use the capital to strengthen its core technology and operations team.

Founded by three IIT-Delhi alumni Ankit Khandelwal, Darpan Khurana, and Arpit Khandelwal in February this year, GroMo aims to provide access to financial products to the underserved and unpenetrated areas of India.

GroMo has built a tech-enabled social commerce platform, to offer a spectrum of financial products such as loans and insurance through its partners.

It launched its pilot in Jaipur and Alwar and claims to have already onboarded more than 500 partners. Currently, it is offering loans and will be adding insurance and investment products later, the company said.

Prior to starting GroMo, Ankit Khandelwal was the chief operating officer at Unicommerce, a SaaS e-commerce company acquired by Snapdeal in 2015, while Khurana was director, strategy, and investments at Snapdeal. Arpit Khandelwal had co-founded design community startup DezignUp, which was acquired by Livspace in 2015.

Recent fintech deals

• May: Online insurance selling platform PolicyBazaar, which is operated by ETechAces Marketing and Consulting Pvt. Ltd, raised about $152 million in a first tranche of Series F funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund.
• May: Mumbai-based Nomisma Mobile Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which owns digital payments and loans platform Ftcash, raised $7.22 million in a Series A round of funding led by seed-stage impact investor Accion Venture Lab and Dutch development bank FMO.
• May: Venture capital firm Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India) topped up its Series B investment in online lending platform EarlySalary.