Indiagold, an alternative gold loan platform, has secured $12 million from PayU, the fintech arm of Prosus, and Alpha Wave Incubation fund, it said on Friday.
Better Tomorrow Ventures, 3one4 Capital, Rainmatter Capital and Leo Capital also participated in the round.
Indiagold, founded in 2020 by former Paytm executives Deepak Abbot and Nitin Misra, had raised around $1.9 million in February from Leo Capital and angel investors, including Cred founder Kunal Shah.
The platform offers digital gold and gold loan services, besides lockers to park gold jewellery to a million consumers in Indore and Delhi-NCR.
Indiagold will use the funds to expand its footprint in another 8-10 cities by the end of FY22, and hire talent. It is also planning to integrate with PayU’s ‘buy now, pay later’ product LazyPay to offer EMI-based purchase of digital gold. The deal, if inked, will also help PayU users buy digital gold.
“At present, we have slightly over 1 million customers across our various digital gold products. In spite of the second wave of covid, where we saw business volumes drop, we have seen demand for digital gold purchase and loans come back. Our July-August volumes are better than the combined April-June quarter,” said Misra.
“We hit $1 million monthly GMV (gross merchandise value) run rate for digital gold purchase on our platform, and we expect it to grow further,” Abbot said.
Apart from its standard gold loan product, Indiagold also offers doorstep conversion of digital gold to physical gold.
Indiagold offers doorstep locker services, wherein an executive visits customer’s homes and helps them park physical gold in lockers. It also provides insurance for the assets, while allowing customers to take loans against the gold kept in lockers.
“By supporting businesses complementing our existing portfolio, we aim to achieve our vision of developing a fintech ecosystem that will meet the financial service needs of millions. PayU is excited to partner with Indiagold in its journey to digitally transform loans against gold,” said Vijay Agicha, global head, strategy and growth, PayU.
Source: Mint