FinTech Start-Up Slice Becomes India’s Newest Unicorn With $200 Million Funding
The funding round was led by investors Tiger Global and New York-based global private equity and venture capital Insight Partners
New Delhi: FinTech start-up Slice, which has raised $220 million in a Series B round that values the company at over $1 billion, becomes India’s newest unicorn.
According to a report in PTI, the round was led by investors Tiger Global and New York-based global private equity and venture capital Insight Partners. New and existing investors, including Advent International’s Sunley House Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Anfa, Gunosy, Blume Ventures, and 8i also participated in the round, Slice said in a statement on Monday.
Even as most individuals in India have bank accounts and debit cards, only a sliver of this banking population has access to credit cards, which is less than 35 million according to industry estimates, it said.
Moreover, the statement said that India’s young credit-rating system covers only a tiny fraction of this population, making it tediously challenging for them to own a credit card.
“Slice is addressing this gap through its Slice super card, a prepaid visa card with a credit line that allows hundreds of millions of Indians to enjoy credit card-like benefits as well as to build their credit score”, the company said. “Users can sign up with Slice in seconds, quickly get a virtual card (and get a physical card delivered to their home), and enjoy up to two per cent cashback on each transaction. Slice has also made it easier and more convenient for users to pay their bills by letting them slice the bill into three months instalments at zero cost,” it said.
Bengaluru-based Slice was founded in 2016. The start-up is an app-based credit card challenger in India and it has a non-banking financial company licence from the Reserve Bank of India.
Rajan Bajaj, founder and CEO, Slice, said, “Since the inception of the company, we’ve held a considerably different point of view from a typical start-up. The idea has never been to burn capital and acquire users forcefully, but to set up a sustainable and robust business. We’ve kept our heads down in the initial years and focused solely on simplifying the consumer journey and creating a cutting-edge risk underwriting system,” he added.
The company intends to use the funding to expand and strengthen its presence in the payments space, hire ‘great’ talent and expand its product offerings.
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