Better Capital backs fintech startup Walrus

Walrus Labs, which owns and operates an eponymous payments app, said on Wednesday that it raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round of funding from venture capital firm Better Capital.

Other participants in the round included angel investors such as Myntra co-founder Raveen Sastry and TaxiForSure founder and ex CEO Raghunandan G.

The Bengaluru headquartered firm will deploy the funds to expand its team and enhance product features, according to a statement.

Founded in January 2019 by Bhagaban Behera, Sriharsha Setty, and Nakul Kelkar, Walrus claims to be a digital-only banking platform for teenagers aged 13 and above. 

The app also allows parents to transfer money to their children instantly via a unified payments interface (UPI).

“Financial literacy is an important aspect of life which most people learn very late in life. In a very competitive, fast-paced world, one should be taught how to calculate taxes, how to budget expenses, invest, and plan for finances earlier than later. Built for the Instagram generation, Walrus is an Instagram equivalent for a bank account which is cool, new-age, intuitive and easy to use,” Behera said.

Walrus further said that teenagers do not require to link a bank account to use the platform. They can easily install the app via Playstore, load money, and pay any merchant via UPI quick response (QR) code or using the debit card for e-commerce purchases. 

Additionally, Walrus is also building a community known as Club Walrus which is a teens-only network for networking and learning interesting things like entrepreneurship, building products, digital marketing, etc. from Industry experts. 

Better Capital, founded in 2018 by CEO Vaibhav Domkundwar, has made early bets in companies such as neo-banking platform Open, digital ledger platform Khatabook, agritech business-to-business trade platform Bijak and bike rental platform Yulu. It recently bet on LocateAI Technologies, which owns and operates location analytics startup Locale.ai.