Growth-stage venture capital firm Elev8 Venture Partners, currently in the process of raising its inaugural VC fund, has led a $50-million (Rs 427-crore) Series D funding round in smallcase, a wealth tech platform that offers curated investment portfolios across various asset classes.
State Street Global Advisors, Niveshaay AIF, Faering Capital, and Arkam Ventures also joined the Bengaluru-based VC firm in the funding round, it said on Friday.
Bengaluru-based smallcase’s latest funding round comes more than three years after it raised $40 million in Series C funding, led by Faering Capital and joined by investors such as Amazon Smbhv Venture Fund and Premji Invest, at a valuation of around $200 million.
The latest investment will help smallcase expand its product offerings, including the integration of asset classes like mutual funds and fixed income, it said in a statement. smallcase plans to enhance its technology and data analytics capabilities while also strengthening its partnerships with leading financial institutions.
The wealth management sector is experiencing growing investor interest, driven by an increasing number of retail investors participating in India's capital markets. This trend has fueled a surge in users on investment platforms such as Groww, Upstox, and Zerodha in recent years.
“India’s retail investing landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, and smallcase has been at the forefront of this transformation," said Navin Honagudi, managing partner at Elev8 Venture Partners.
smallcase is operated by Smallcase Technologies Pvt Ltd, which was founded in 2015 by Vasanth Kamath, Anugrah Shrivastava, and Rohan Gupta.
Launched in 2016, smallcase now boasts over 10 million investors on its platform, which manages portfolios of stocks or ETFs that track specific themes, strategies, or objectives. The company partners with more than 250 leading financial institutions, including research firms, advisors, wealth managers, and brokerages.
For the financial year ended March 2024, the company reported a significant increase in consolidated revenue, which more than doubled to Rs 67.4 crore from Rs 30.6 crore the previous year, as per VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle. However, it posted a loss of Rs 174.1 crore, slightly higher than the Rs 165.3-crore loss in the previous year.
Elev8’s investment in smallcase marks the third deal from its inaugural VC fund, which has a target corpus of $200 million. The firm’s investments typically range between $10 million and $15 million. The fund is anchored by South Korea's KB Investment and has previously backed startups such as identity verification platform IDfy and astrology platform Astrotalk. The fund marked its first close at $67 million in August 2023.
In June 2024, Honagudi had told VCCircle that Elev8 aims to mark the final close of its fund by the end of the ongoing financial year, which concludes this month. However, Elev8 had declined to comment on the status of the fundraise. In January this year, the firm appointed a senior executive from retail giant Walmart to its investment team.
