YC Continuity Fund makes first India bet on retail investment platform Groww

Nextbillion Technology, which operates retail investment platform Groww, has raised $30 million (about Rs 220 crore) in a Series C round led by YC Continuity. 

This is the first Indian investment made by YC Continuity, which backs growth rounds of mostly YCombinator startups with cheque sizes ranging from $20 million to $100 million. 

Returning investors Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital and Propel Ventures also participated in the round, according to a statement. The company will use the capital to strengthen its technology infrastructure, product expansion and hiring talent across engineering, product and growth. The company also said that it will use part of the capital for its financial education initiative. 

Bengaluru headquartered Groww had last raised $21.4 million in a Series B round in September 2019 led by Ribbit Capital. With the current round, Groww has raised over $60.3 million according to data sourced from VCCEdge. 

Founded in 2017 by former Flipkart executives Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal, Groww started as a mutual funds investment platform and later added stock broking to its platform. 

“Over the last few years, we have made investing in mutual funds and stocks simple and transparent for millions of investors in India,” Lalit Keshre, CEO at Groww said in the statement. 

The platform currently claims to have over 80 lakh registered users and plans to add more products in the retail investment space. Apart from mutual funds and stock broking, the platform also offers services to trade in US stocks and gold. 

According to Groww, some 60% of its users are from tier 2 and 3 cities, and about 60% of those are first-time investors. The company also runs financial education initiatives. 

Fintech companies in the wealth management and retail investment space have garnered investor interest in the recent past. Earlier this year, wealth management platform for HNIs 9high net worth individuals), INDWealth, secured $12 million led by Steadview Capital and Tiger Global. In December 2019, WealthBucket raised $3 million from NorthStar and a group of HNIs. In January 2019, online investment platform Scripbox raised $21.7 million from returning investors Accel and others.