Daily savings app in beta mode, for self employed individuals earning ₹30-70K (~$350-800), looking to save/invest ₹50-200 a day in debt mutual funds. Savings is an entry wedge - "in the fintech space, it is difficult to sell savings as a product to end users, making customer acquisition difficult. Once we manage to scale the product, we will look into expanding our offerings to include a bouquet of financial products. These may include partially secured lending, FDs, credit cards, among others". $4M seed round, including Abhiraj Bhal (Urban Company); Sunil Prabhune (L&T); Abhinav Sinha, Maninder Gulati (OYO). All three founders are IIM, IIT and ex-BCG, with stints at OYO and Urban Company.

Soon to launch NBFC that got its license on 11 April. It will provide microloans against property to small businesses, starting with 15 branches in MP. $2.5M seed round, apparently at a $5.9M post-money valuation. The three founders spent between 13 and 20 years each at ICICI - as Zonal Head, MFI Head, Product Head (Business Banking).

Fintech that offers micro surety bonds to MSMEs, providing collateral-free alternatives to traditional bank guarantees. ₹22CR (~$2.6M) seed round. Other investors in this round: AngelList. Aditya and Rajeev were co-founders of Numberz (receivables management, acquired by Chargebee); Mukand is from Aon, Tata AIG.

Remittances platform focused on NRIs in the US for now. Claims 500K monthly transacting users and $110-120M in remittances processing in the last 12 months. The app goes beyond remittances - users can earn rewards and get cash back on various services, including live sports (cricket) streaming, grocery shopping and OTT subscriptions. $14M seed round. Nishkaam was Head of Mobile Strategy and Growth at Hulu before joining Times Internet to create Times Club, a super app in 2019, which was spun off as Abound in 2023. Lots of activity in cross border payments in recent months: HiWiPay, Dodo Payments, Rupeeflo, Infinity.

Another month, another LAMF (Loan Against Mutual Funds) product gets funded (see Quicklend, funded 5th Feb). LAMFs are available at rates starting from 10.5%, vs. ~30% for personal loans. Now expanding into lending against stocks, insurance and digital assets. ₹9.2CR round. Ashutosh is ex-Navi and Swiggy, Aryan is ex-BrowserStack.

Debt resolution platform for banks and NBFCs. Product offering is almost identical to CredResolve (also funded in the same week, see below). $3.5M seed round. The founders are two of the four co-founders behind digital lending startup Kissht - Karan was CTO/Sonali was COO over there.

Micro-investing platform that rounds up your online transactions and invests the spare change in mutual funds. $3M seed round. Satyajeet was the co-founder of Grospire, an aquaponics startup.

SaaS tools for debt collection. Works with over 20 banks and NBFCs. Automates constant communication with borrowers during the tenure of their loan along with customised payment links, sends digital notices, solves litigations online and provides a multi-lingual field collection app. $1.1M seed round. Founders: Balaji, IIT Roorkee, comes from WheelsEye Finance (unsecured credit for fleet owners); Prashanth is a software lead from WheelsEye; Vijay, IIT Roorkee, brings product experience, also ex-WheelsEye.

Cross-border payments platform currently focused on student remittances and now entering new segments - SME trade remittances and co-branded forex cards. $2M seed round. The CEO Dewang was CEO of NTT Data Payment Services India; Geeta, CBO, was Head of Strategic Alliances at the same company; Ujwal, CTO, is from Infosys, Citi and a couple of startups.

Cross border payments for the world. Merchants globally (not just in India) can accept payments from 150 countries, using 25 payment methods, with a 90% success rate. $1.1M pre-seed round. Other investors in this round: Nitin Gupta (Uni Cards/PayU), Maninder Gulati (Oyo/Lightspeed), Raymond Russell (Boom Supersonic), Preethi Kasireddy (a16z), Nishant Verman (Flipkart). Founders: Rishabh, the CEO, BITS Pilani + LBS, worked at Prodigy Finance (cross border payments) and briefly at Wise (fka TransferWise). Ayush, the CPTO, IIT-Roorkee, worked at Tournafest and briefly at IndiGG. Comps: Infinity, funded on 6 Feb 2025, is tackling this in a different way.