Alphafront Finserv Pvt. Ltd, which runs online investment platform Goalwise, has raised $1 million (around Rs 6.8 crore) from a bunch of high net-worth individuals (HNIs), the company's CEO and co-founder Swapnil Bhaskar told VCCircle.
Bhaskar said the HNIs were associated with the financial services sector but declined to name the individuals.
The funds raised will be used to scale up Goalwise's technological, analytical and operations infrastructure.
The fin-tech startup will look at raising about $5 million in the next three to four months, he added.
Goalwise was advised by Dexter Capital, which offers services to growth stage companies as well as new-age entrepreneurs in the early stage funding process.
Bangalore-based Goalwise runs on its self-designed algorithms for investment advisory, mutual fund selection, as well as a goal tracking technology called GoalSense.
After studying the profile of an individual, Goalwise creates an investment plan for each goal, allocates savings according to the user’s risk level, invests in mutual funds and tracks the investments.
“It's like having an intelligent personal investment manager available online for free," Bhaskar said.
Goalwise earns its fees from the mutual fund companies.
The mutual fund investments are held directly under the name of the user, and these can be redeemed anytime, with or without going through Goalwise. The mutual funds it has tied up with include Franklin Templeton, ICICI Prudential, Birla Sun Life and Axis Mutual Fund.
Goalwise also lets individuals know if they are on track to reach their investment goals such as retirement or buying a house. In case an individual is not on track, it gives simple suggestions for achieving that goal such as hiking the investment, switching the investment.
Goalwise was founded in April 2015 by IIT Kanpur alumni Bhaskar and Ankur Choudhary, along with Savitri Bobde, a St Xavier’s Mumbai alumnus. While Bobde is the product lead, Choudhary is chief investment officer of the company. Bhaskar brings on board several years’ of experience in the banking sector, where he specialised in personal finance, while Choudhary spent six years in portfolio management at several Indian and global investment management firms. Bobde has been working in the education research space for six years.
The company had a soft-launch phase from February 2016 to April 2016 to test its product.
Other investment platforms in the space include Tauro Investment Advisors Pvt Ltd which operates online stock market investment platform Tauro Wealth and Scripbox.Com India Pvt Ltd which runs online fintech portal Scripbox. Tauro received seed funding from TracxnLabs and a bunch of unnamed angel investors early this year.
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