AI Growth Pvt. Ltd, which operates high-yield fixed-income investment platform Jiraaf, has raised $7.5 million (around Rs 57.7 crore) in Series A funding round led by Accel Partners, Mankekar and Aspire family offices.
The fresh funds will be used to build a team to source high-quality opportunities, strengthen customer service and enhance tech capabilities, the company noted.
The round also saw participation from Capital A, PharmEasy founders, Ramakant Sharma (co-founder Livspace), Founders of Zetwerk, Anuj Jhaveri (Barclays, Hong Kong) and Shantanu Garg (managing director and Partner, BCG).
Founded in September 2021 by Saurav Ghosh and Vineet Agrawal, Jiraaf offers high yield non-market linked investment opportunities with returns in the range of 8-20% and tenors ranging from 30 days to 3 years.
“Over the last 8 months, we have originated opportunities over Rs 250 crore and have more than 10,000 registered investors. The funds raised in this round are going to be used to build our team for sourcing more opportunities, robust credit assessment and strengthening our customer service. We are looking to achieve a transaction volume of Rs 1,000 crore by this year-end and an investor base of 100,000,” Agrawal said.
Ghosh, a finance professional, has previously served as head of corporate finance and strategy for the Ozone Group. Agrawal has served as a senior associate principal in Piramal Fund Management before starting Jiraaf, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
“We curate exclusive alternate fixed income products and through rigorous risk assessment ensure that the investors have access to high-quality opportunities,” Ghosh says.
Barath Shankar Subramanian, partner at Accel Partners, said, “There is a strong demand for alternate fixed-income products among retail investors. India has nearly $2 trillion invested in fixed deposits and the mutual fund industry is sized at $0.5 trillion which saw a 3 times growth in the last 5 years. Jiraaf is addressing a large market gap by offering diversified fixed income products which can form a meaningful part of every investor’s portfolio over the next decade, especially in the current and forecasted macroeconomic scenario.”
