Jar, an engagement platform for savings and investments operated by ChangeJar Technologies Pvt Ltd, has raised $32 million as a part of its Series A funding round led by Tiger Global Management, the company said in a statement on Friday.
Rocketship.vc, Third Prime, Stonks, Force Ventures along with existing investors including Arkam Ventures and WEH Ventures also participated in the funding round, the company said. Entrepreneurs including Klarna Founder Victor Jacobsson, Suleman Ali of Ali Capital, Shamir Karkal, Founder of Sila Money, Byron Ling of Cannan Partners, Joel John of Ledger Prime and Italic Founder Jeremy Cai also participated in the round.
The company plans to use the funds to expand its product range and for customer acquisition, the statement added.
Jar, which launched its mobile application in June last year, enables users to save and invest small amounts in gold. The Jar app saves a small amount each time a user makes a transaction. The app, which has the access to look at the transaction history, rounds up an individual’s daily spending and puts some money aside as investment in digital gold. Users’ investments in digital gold are backed by physical gold of the same amount and they can choose to withdraw that much gold or liquidate their investments at any time, the company said.
The company, which had raised $4.5 million in August last year as a part of its seed funding round, is now planning to add other asset classes along with gold, where it will invest users’ savings.
“We are evaluating adding mutual funds, we haven’t decided what kind of funds, but we will be making partnerships with AMCs (asset management companies) for that. EGRs (electronic gold receipts) are around the corner, and we may consider adding EGRs also. Along with this, we are evaluating ETFs and fixed deposits by partnering with banks,” Nishchay AG, Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, told VCCircle in a telephonic interaction.
Jar claims to have onboarded over 4 million users, and said that most of these users have made any kind of investment for the first time in their lives. Jar said that the app is witnessing more than 100 transactions each minute and claims to have users in every Indian state.
“Existing platforms are filled with jargons; those are primarily for financial literates. What we are building is for the general public, the masses. I am not making a distinction between grey collar workers or blue-collar workers, what I am saying today is my users are new to savings, and we want to provide a solution, which is kind of habit forming, which is kind of not pretentious, which is welcoming,” explained Nischay.
India is the world’s second-largest internet market and it is witnessing a promising shift with a majority of the ‘Generation Z’ starting to save money responsibly, which offers Jar a large market. Jar said it will also deploy the capital to offer users lending and insurance, the statement noted.
“Jar is bringing new users into the online investing space, starting with digital gold as the first product. We are bought in to Jar’s mission of helping users build a daily savings habit, and we’re excited to partner with the team as they scale to millions of customers,” said Alex Cook, Partner at Tiger Global.
