Mutual Fund Investment Platform Nivesh.com Raises Rs 3 Cr in Seed Funding

Providential Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates mass market mutual funds investment platform, Nivesh.com, has raised Rs 3 crore in a seed round of funding through LetsVenture. Google India MD – Rajan Anandan and former Infosys Global Sales Head - Basab Pradhan are among the major angel investors in the venture. 

Other prominent investors include Vivek Khare, Advisor Corporate Development at Naukri.com, Debasish Hota, CEO at CompuGain Corporation, USA, Windrose Capital, Bijoy George, Partner at Full Circle Tech LLP, and Lets Venture LLC.

The startup which already has customers across 200 cities and business partners in over 15 cities is looking to grow three folds in terms of business in 2018.

Mutual Fund market has grown over three times in the last 5 years from Rs 7.01 trillion in March 2013 to Rs 23.26 trillion in April 2018. With an extremely low penetration of around 3-4%, the industry is poised to continue growing at a steady pace.

Commenting on the development, Anurag Garg, Founder and CEO, Nivesh.com said, “This investment further cements our belief in the business model. We are witnessing extremely good response from our target audience and working on expanding our geographical footprints. While enriching the user experience, we will also look at strengthening our distribution network and in enhancing our technology platform to make it more intelligent”.

Nivesh.com was founded in 2016 by industry veterans Anurag Garg and Sridhar Srinivasan. Prior to starting Nivesh.com, Garg had co-founded mutualfundsindia.com, which was acquired by rating agency ICRA while Srinivasan helmed the India unit of investment research platform Visible Alpha. 

Nivesh.com raised an angel round from VCCircle founder PV Sahad; Sandeep Shroff, founder and CEO of Silicon Valley based MyStartUpCFO.com and Right Global Infosolutions CEO Rahul Gupta.

The platform enables intelligent and automated mutual fund scheme selection, transaction and portfolio tracking. It is also available in Hindi to enable higher adoption by population living in Bharat. It also uses Aadhar based e-KYC to eliminate hassles around onboarding of first time customers.

Recent deals in this space include Mumbai-based zero commission direct mutual fund investment platform, Orowealth, raised $1.6 million in Series A in April; Bengaluru-based online financial planning and investment platform Kuvera raised $250,000 (Rs 1.6 crore) in its second round of angel investment in March; and Mumbai-based Fincash.com that helps investors transact as well as monitor their investments in mutual funds, wealth management products and other investments, raised Rs 1 crore ($150,000) from a group of angel investors in February.