Mumbai-based fintech startup Bold Finance on Thursday said it has secured seed funding of $1.5 million (around Rs 12 crore) led by venture capital firm Kae Capital.
The round also saw participation from existing investor Antler India, with a host of angel investors including Nitin Gupta (Uni Cards), Ishpreet Gandhi (Stride Ventures) and Shashikant Dola (McKinsey & Company), among others.
The firm will deploy the fresh proceeds to scale up its branches.
Founded by ex-Mckinsey and ex-Flipkart executives Nikhil Jain and Durgesh Suthar, respectively, last year, Bold Finance claims to leverage existing jewelers’ shops for acquiring customers, gold appraisal and loan disbursement, while, teaming up with banks to underwrite loans and facilitate storage for gold collateral.
“Gold loan is mostly a distress or a working capital loan, wherein customers need it urgently. In such a situation, ease of access in hyper-local neighbourhoods, longer operating hours, and low-interest rates are paramount to customers. Bold Finance is smartly placed to cater to such customers and deliver safe, fast and trusted loans in the market,” said Jain.
“The gold lending industry is a large $65 billion market that continues to be unorganized and fragmented. The customer is looking for a superior experience while borrowing. We believe that Bold’s approach of partnering with the jewellers breaks the trust barrier with the consumer and enables them to deepen the relationship,” said Sunitha Viswanathan, Partner at Kae Capital.
In January, Bold Finance had secured an undisclosed sum of pre-seed funding from the early-stage venture capital firm Antler India.
Mobility solution provider Automovill has raised Rs 2.15 crore as a part of its pre-Series A funding round led by angel network Inflection Point Ventures.
The startup will use the fresh funds to expand its marketing and operations as well as product portfolio.
Founded by Mridu Mahendra Das, Chinmay Baruah and Ramana Sambu in 2015, Automovill as a platform caters to both business-to-business and business-to-consumer customers across the automotive after-sales ecosystem.
“The team has quickly picked up our business model and presented a very comprehensive analysis and data collection for Automovill. It reflected the perfect impression of Automovill,” said Das.
“Automovill is tapping into this market which is highly expensive on one end and totally unorganized on the other. Our interest in the company comes from the fact that it is a hugely untapped market with only a few organized players, and we are confident that with the disruptive and tech-enabled strategy of Automovill, we will see them growing faster than its peers at pan India level,” said Mitesh Shah, co-founder of Inflection Point Ventures.
Launched by Ankur Mittal, Vinay Bansal and Mitesh Shah, IPV had invested Rs 215 crore in 51 startups in 2021. BharatPe emerged as a multi-bagger giving over 80folds returns to IPV which it exited to BharatPe’s returning investor Coatue Management who led the $108 million Series D round in the fintech unicorn last year.
IPV first invested in BharatPe in 2018 and has completed a full exit.
