[Funding] FinTech Groww has raised $30 mn (220 Cr) in Series C, led by YC Continuity

Popular investment platform Groww has raised $30 M (220 Cr) in Series C, led by YC Continuity. The round also saw participation from existing investors Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital, and Propel Ventures. This is YC Continuity’s first investment in India.

It will employ the capital to strengthen Groww’s technology infrastructure, expand its product suite and hire top talent across engineering, product and growth divisions. A part of the funding will be utilised to further fuel their pan-India financial education initiative ‘Ab India Karega Invest’.

About Groww

Found in 2017, Groww has become one of the fastest-growing investment platforms in India. It has 80 Lac registered users on the platform. The platform currently offers stockbroking and direct mutual funds and both products have scaled exceptionally well. Groww records more than 1.5 Lac new SIPs every month. Groww Stocks has also seen a meteoric rise with more than 1 Lac Demat accounts getting added on a monthly basis, within three months of the launch.

Four ex-Flipsters, Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal, started Groww together to make investing simple for millions of users in India.

At present, 60% of Groww users hail from tier 2,3 cities and 60% of these are first-time investors. To bring financial products within their grasp, Groww started a financial education initiative ‘Ab India Karega Invest’, earlier this year. Groww experts toured select cities to conduct workshops on investing. The initiative, which is open to anyone who wants to learn about investing, has been moved online due to Covid. The weekly live sessions see top fund managers and CEOs from leading Indian AMCs answer investment-related questions and guide investors. The campaign has received a phenomenal response so far with the sessions garnering more than 2 Lac views.

Apart from mutual funds and stocks, people can also invest in US stocks and Gold on the Groww platform. Groww is soon to expand into other products that will help investors diversify across multiple asset classes.

About the investment

Talking about the investment, Lalit Keshre, Co-founder and CEO, Groww, said: “Over the last few years, we have made investing in mutual funds and stocks simple and transparent for millions of investors in India. If we look at the opportunity that lies ahead, it still feels like Day 1. We started our journey with small steps writing blogs and making videos to educate people about investing. Our wealth as a nation will keep growing, and our mission is to provide the best experience to investors to manage their wealth. We are happy to partner with investors who believe in our long term vision. YC played a key role in our early years and now this investment will help us accelerate towards our goals.”

Speaking on the development, Anu Hariharan, partner at YC Continuity commented, “We believe Groww is building the largest retail brokerage in India. At YC, we have known the founders since the company was just an idea and they are some of the best product people you will meet anywhere in the world. We are grateful to be partners with Groww as they build one of the largest retail financial platforms in the world.”

“India is seeing increased participation of retail investors in financial markets – with 2M new stock market investors added in the last quarter alone”, said Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India LLP. “Groww is leading this change by serving millions of retail investors. In the last two years, they have expanded their product offering. They have built a strong team in its journey to make investing simple for Indians”, he added.