Credit and payment startup slice raised INR 165 crore in debt in FY21

New-age credit and payment startup, slice aims to revolutionise the credit card industry. The startup today announced that it has raised a cumulative debt of INR 165 crores in FY21. The raise from 18 leading financial institutions, namely, Northern Arc Capital Limited, Vivriti Capital Private Limited, AU Small Finance Bank, Incred Financial Services Limited, Pace Fincap Private Limited, Western Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd, and Innoven Capital India Pvt Ltd among others comes in a pandemic struck timeline. Out of this, the company raised INR 126 crores in just the last 5 months of FY21.

Talking about the debt-raise, Rajan Bajaj, Founder and CEO, slice, said, “Last year was volatile; which makes it even more empowering for us to have such strong financial institutions show solidarity with our vision. The number of institutions investing in us has grown significantly in FY21 alone; validation of our strategy of keeping the lowest NPAs in the industry.”

He added, “Our priority right now is to support the country in every way possible as we all collectively fight the second wave. We have all learnt several lessons from the pandemic last year which will help us put our best foot forward & cater to our members’ needs adeptly. Customer centricity and business agility are more important in today’s times than ever before.”

About slice

The five-year-old startup caters to over 300,000 credit-worthy youth and has 900,000 on its waitlist today; 70% of them being young working professionals. The company has processed a transaction volume of over $250 mn. It further plans to achieve a GTV run rate of $1 bn in FY22. With this, slice also plans to grow its member base by more than 3x to 1 mn in the next 12 months. In the last few quarters, slice has witnessed significant growth in terms of consumers and the size of the team.

Despite the pandemic, the company grew by 125% in 2020 and has recorded a 40-50% increase in average customer spends. The company also plans to double its employee strength in 2021 with a major focus on tech, product and design.

slice is backed by leading VCs such as Gunosy Capital, Das Capital, Finup, Blume Ventures India, Simile Venture Partner, EMVC, Tracxn Labs, Better Capital, Sachin Bansal's Navi alongside angel investors such as Kunal Shah.

Read More: CxO of the Week: Mahima Garg, Chief Risk Officer, slice