Uthaan Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates Microfinance.ai, a fintech startup, has raised $200,000 (Rs 1.5 crore) in a Pre-Seed funding round led by We Founder Circle (WFC), the company said in a statement on Thursday.
The round also witnessed the participation of FAAD Network, Gujarat University Start-up and Entrepreneurship Council (GUSEC), Saurabh Aggarwal, Co-founder Fitso, Ankit Prasad, Founder and CEO Bobble AI among others.
The company said it will use the funds for backend technology development to further strengthen the platform, and also to hire talent.
Founded by Swati Sinha and Kapil Patil in 2020, the startup offers a mobile platform named LYT, which makes it easy for local-language preferred and less educated users, to avail financial services digitally.
“Microfinance.AI primarily focuses on providing a digital platform for availing micro financial services and empowering local-language preferred users with customised knowledge delivered in bit-size content,” said Kapil Patil, Co-founder, Microfinance.AI said.
Founded in 2020, the Mumbai-based We Founder Circle is a global community of founders and angels that help early-stage startups. It claims to invest around $50000- $150000 (around Rs 37 lakh- Rs 1 crore) in early-stage startups.
Earlier this month, We Circle Founder applied for its first fund with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and seeks to raise Rs 200 crore (around $27 million).
Karan Verma, Co-founder at Faad, noted that India's microfinance market is expected to grow at a brisk rate of more than 40% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2025.
"Not only we are bullish on the space but also positive on what microfinance.ai is offering for the un-banked and under banked segment of the population. We see them as a tool of empowerment of bringing financial inclusion and of creating more entrepreneurs," added Verma.
Faad is a sector agnostic early-stage investor network which invests in pre-seed to Series A startups with a ticket size of $50,000-$1 million. It has invested in more than 45 startups so far, and it 90% of its portfolios have been added post pandemic.
