Indian neobank Yelo raises seed round
Bangalore-based digital bank Yelo has raised its seed round, leading to hopes it will be able to expand its team from 20 to 100 within the next 18 months.
Yelo: “This segment that we are targeting is around 80-100 million strong”
Participating in the round were new investors Matrix Partners India, Omidyar Network India, Flourish and current investor, Better Capital.
Yelo is owned by 0.5Bn FinHealth, companies founded by the same man, Nilesh Agarwal.
“This segment that we are targeting is around 8-10-crore [80-100 million] strong and works for small corporate entities or with aggregators like food-delivery platforms, taxi services and others. There is a huge opportunity in providing financial services to them,” says Agarwal.
The funding amount, which was not disclosed, will help the mobile-first challenger develop and expand its financial products for remittance, healthcare, education, e-commerce and day-to-day cash flow management.
The start-up wants to personalise its offerings to gig economy workers, enabling them to bank, pay, get credit and take out insurance with ease.
Funds will also go into overall operations of the company, including product, technology, sales and customer service teams.
The neobank is joining fellow Indian challengers Open and NiYO, which have both received funding in the last few months too. Open raised $30 million in a round led by Tiger Global, whilst NiYO raised $35 million from Tencent Holdings and Horizons Ventures.
