Wealth management firm to give access to - as the name suggests - alternative investments. Claims to have onboarded 100 HNI clients. ₹1CR seed round from undisclosed family offices. Founders: the CEO had a brief stint at Client Associates and as a Wealth Advisor to the founder of "one of India largest gaming company's"; the other co-founder was at Client Associates for close to five years.

FX infra startup which has just come out of stealth. New payment rails and a last-mile liquidity model ensure that 90% of FX transactions are settled within 60 minutes rather than the typical 2-7 day norm. In less than a year, the startup claims to have processed >$10B in annualised transaction volume. $23M seed round. Other investors in the round: Castle Island Ventures, Flybridge, Hash3. Founder & CEO Prabhakar Reddy, BITS and HBS, is ex-Accel, the former co-founder of Falcon X (digital assets brokerage) and former CEO of Dramatize (acquired by BookMyShow).

This is Policybazaar's healthcare venture, led by it's founder Yashish Dahiya. The company was incorporated on the 1st of January this year and aims to set up a 1,000 bed hospital network in Delhi NCR. The company will operate hospitals itself, with 4-5 locations (600-800 beds) to be set up over the next year. The idea is to integrate insurance and healthcare seamlessly - removing pre-authorizations, simplifying claims, reducing avoidable surgeries with preventative healthcare. This is a $218M seed round at a $243M valuation. It appears to be tranched. So far PB Fintech (Policybazaar's parent) has invested $62M for a 26% stake; General Catalyst has invested $50M for 20.57%; while Dahiya, co-founder Alok Bansal and other execs have invested ~$15M. PB Fintech itself made ₹1,292CR in Q3 FY25 with a ₹72CR profit. In a similar move coming from the opposite direction, Narayana Hrudalaya launched its insurance arm last year. Private hospital chains in India will add over 10K beds over the next three years - 3500 by Apollo, 3700 by Max, 2200 by Fortis and 1700 by Aster. Hospital chains are growing revenues 12-14% a year with ~22% operating margins, according to ICRA. 40M Indians buy health insurance annually - while premium's have been going up 15% a year, incomes haven't been keeping pace. As noted in the Financial Express, "a study by the Insurance Brokers Association of India (IBAI) study found that in FY23, insurers settled 86% of claims by count, but paid only 51% of the total claim value. While insurers blame over-treatment and inflated bills, hospitals argue that rising equipment costs are to blame."

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.