Consumer neo banking company Niyo, operated by Finnew Solutions, has raised $30 million (around Rs 240 crore) from homegrown private equity firm Multiples Alternate Asset Management, the company said on Tuesday.
The announcement comes on the back of Niyo raising $100 million in Series C funding led by Accel and Lightrock India. With this fundraise, Niyo has raised almost $165 million over three funding rounds.
“Our focus is on enhancing product development, and improving our product suite to have more consumer-focused products like credit cards, remittances, and loans. Our foray into new product categories will help us leverage the massive tailwinds for digital financial products the market is seeing today,” said Virender Bisht, Chief Technology Officer, co-founder, Niyo.
Niyo, founded in 2015 by Vinay Bagri and Virender Bisht, has offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi. NiYO Inc, the holding company of Finnew Solutions Pvt Ltd, is based in the US, while Finnew Solutions looks after the Indian operations. It currently has over 4 million customers across its banking and wealth management products with over 10,000 new users added daily to its platform.
In an interaction earlier this year, Bagri said that the company is looking to expand inorganically to enhance Niyo’s technology and add more products to its offerings. Bagri said that the company will not look to acquire companies just to expand its customer base.
'Niyo is able to reach customers in over 16,000 pin codes which cover 80% of the pin codes in India,” Nithya Easwaran, Managing Director at Multiples said.
She added, “India has 750 million smartphone users, which is expected to grow to 1 billion over the next 3-4 years. Fintech platforms in symbiotic collaboration with traditional financial institutions can construct and deliver embedded sachet products digitally in a highly cost-effective manner thereby driving financial inclusion.”
Neobanking platforms like Niyo need to partner with a traditional bank for a banking license to offer banking products as they do not have one of their own.
Niyo has partnerships with five banks--Yes Bank, ICICI Bank, SBM Bank, DCB Bank and Equitas Small Finance Bank. Bagri said that the company currently offers travel products and other banking products to consumers along with prepaid products for blue-collar employees.
Equitas, DCB and SBM Bank provide travel and other consumer banking products with Niyo, while Yes Bank and ICICI Bank provide prepaid products to blue-collar workers through Niyo.
Avendus Capital was the financial advisor to Niyo on the transaction.
The deal comes as Multiples said it is looking to double down on its fintech play from a proposed new fund, the firm said in an interaction with VCCircle earlier today.
Multiples made its first fintech bet from its third fund, backing digital insurer Acko in 2021.
