Raising $83 Million, Groww turns a Unicorn

Investment platform, Groww has raised $83 million as a part of its Series D funding round that was led by Tiger Global Management at a valuation of over $1 billion. Alongside, the funding round also witnessed the firm's existing investors participation namely Ribbit Capital, YC Continuity, Sequoia India, and Propel Venture Partners.

With this fundraising, Groww has become the second fintech startup to turn unicorn this week, after Kunal Shah-founded Cred. However, three Indian start-ups have attained unicorn status in the first week of April, including API Holdings, PharmEasy.

In September 2022, the company had raised $30 million as part of its Series C funding led by YC Continuity, Y Combinator’s growth stage fund. Furthermore, Groww intends to use the funding to expand its product line, onboard fresh engineering talent and invest in new education initiatives for first-time investors.

Lalit Keshre, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder, Groww says, “We started Groww almost five years ago to make investing accessible and transparent to everyone in India. We have made good progress, but it feels we have just got started. Only around 25 million people in India are investing in stocks or mutual funds. We will continue working to change this. The new capital will help us invest in new products, acquire talent, and continue building our financial education platforms."

Moreover, the startup claims to have included almost seven million registered users in the last six months alone. Thus, it has acquired 15 million registered users that include four million active monthly users.

With this fresh funding, the startup intends to launch futures and options, along with derivative trading, on its platform and offer alternative investments to users through investment in government bonds.

However, the firm competes with online stock brokerages Zerodha and Upstox, and Paytm Money, the wealth management division of One97 Communications.

Bootstrapped, Zerodha ventured the unicorn club in June last year following an ESOP buyback exercise.Thus, in 2020, the investment platform has also launched Groww Academy to instruct new users on investments and personal finance.

The recent study carried out by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Ficci) reports that the valuations of Indian financial technology companies are expected to grow thrice in the next five years, and touch $150-160 billion.

Currently, the total valuation of India’s burgeoning fintech sector is approximated to range from $50-$60 billion.