FinTech startup slice has raised USD 220 million in a Series B round that values the company at over USD one billion, making it India’s newest unicorn. 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.
Earlier this year in June, Slice had raised $20 million as a part of a funding round led by existing investors Blume Ventures and Gunosy Capital.
FinTech startup Slice offers a credit card targeted at India’s young people. Signing up and applying for the card is completely digital – via its app on Google’s Android play store and Apple’s app store. It is focused on new-age millennials and Gen Z, with an average age of 27, who are refused credit cards by large banks due to inadequate credit scoring.
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.
The statement said that the nation’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.
Founder & CEO, slice, Rajan Bajaj, 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.
Slice plans to use proceeds from the latest fundraise to grow its existing lines of business, invest in newer products and also grow its engineering and design functions. The company will also use a portion of the fresh capital to fund its non-banking financial company (NBFC) arm and scale its loan book.
Along with that, FinTech startup Slice, which has about 600 employees, will also use the new funds to step up hiring for skilled professionals from engineering, design and data science.
Slice is the 41st Indian startup to achieve unicorn status this year. A unicorn is a privately-held startup with a valuation of $1 billion or more.
