Slice, an app-based credit card challenger fintech company, is India's newest unicorn, having raised $220 million in a Series B funding round led by investment giant Tiger Global and equity firm Insight Partners. The company is now valued at over $1 billion.
Existing investors also participated in the round, with investment firm Moore Strategic Ventures, Private equity firm Advent International's affiliate Sunley House Capital, India's Blume Ventures, and Japan's Gunosy Capital pitching in.
Unicorns, named after the mythical animal, are privately-held startups valued at over $1 billion or roughly Rs 7,000 crore. The term was initially used to emphasise the rarity of such startups. However, now India has over 70 startup unicorns, with over 25 recorded till August 2021 alone.
The company plans to use the capital for scaling up, Rajan Bajaj, the company's founder and CEO, told Reuters in an interview. Bajaj, an engineering graduate, founded the Bengaluru-based startup in 2016.
Slice is also planning to step up hiring for positions like engineering, design and data science while adding new consumer products, Bajaj added. The startup currently has 600 employees and 5 million registered users on the app, Bajaj said.
Slice currently offers a credit card targeted at India's young people. Signing up and applying for the card is completely digital - via its app on Google's Android play store and Apple's app store.
Allowing users to split their bill into three interest-free monthly instalments is among the Slice card's key features.
Slice is also gearing up to launch payments on India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a state-backed system that simplifies inter-bank money transfers and merchant payments, Bajaj said. "What we are doing for cards today we are also going to do for consumer payments. We are launching our UPI product next," Bajaj said without giving a timeline.
China's Ant Group-backed fintech Paytm, Google and Walmart's PhonePe are currently among the top players in India offering UPI-based payments.
(With inputs from Reuters)
(Edited by : Yashi Gupta)
First Published: Nov 29, 2021 10:31 AM IST
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