Citrus Pay Co-founder's Financial Planing App Cube Wealth Raises $2 Mn from Beenext, 500 Startups, Others

Mumbai headquartered Cube Consumer Services Pvt. Ltd that runs and owns, Cube Wealth, a finance and investment planning app, has raised ₹14 crore (~ $2 million) in a Series A round from Singapore-based venture fund Beenext, Japan-based Asuka Holding and 500 Startups, a US-based early stage venture fund.

The freshly raised funds will be used by the startup to grow sales in its top cities -- Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune—and expand to Europe and Japan, targeting non-resident Indians.

Cube was founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneur Satyen V Kothari, who is also the co-founder of payment gateway Citrus Pay, which was acquired by PayU in 2016 for $130 million. He has previously founded marketing automation firm Trapezo and e-commerce firm Lotus White, among others.

Initially started as a niche bill payments and expense service, Cube Wealth helps manage investment portfolios and provides investment advice from SEBI-registered advisors. The app offers members wealth creation, automated savings, and expense management.

[caption id="attachment_126840" align="aligncenter" width="501"] Cube Team with Kothari (Image - Cube @ Facebook)[/caption]

Acording to Kothari, Cube Wealth is aiming to becomes profitable by the time it goes for a Series B fundraise, that is roughly 18 months from now.

“We are targeting the upper middle class segment of users who have an income of ₹10 lakh per annum and above and want to make financial planning easy and jargon-free,” said Kothari, in a statement given to LiveMint.com.

The startup currently employs 15 people, mostly engineers, and will look to hire more in the next year, although it targets at keeping the employee count below 50. The Cube team comes with a background in digital payments, personal finance, and design. They have worked with market giants like Apple, Frogdesign, Yahoo!, Intuit, Citrus Pay, American Express, HSBC Bank, Disney, Zynga and First Data to hone our skills for Cube.

The Cube team has previously released a mobile app for bill payments called, 'Cube Bills', that has garnered over 2.5 million downloads and exceptional ratings in the App Store and Google Play store.

Source - LiveMint

Citrus Pay Co-founder's Financial Planing App Cube Wealth Raises $2 Mn from Beenext, 500 Startups, Others

Mumbai headquartered Cube Consumer Services Pvt. Ltd that runs and owns, Cube Wealth, a finance and investment planning app, has raised ₹14 crore (~ $2 million) in a Series A round from Singapore-based venture fund Beenext, Japan-based Asuka Holding and 500 Startups, a US-based early stage venture fund.

The freshly raised funds will be used by the startup to grow sales in its top cities -- Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune—and expand to Europe and Japan, targeting non-resident Indians.

Cube was founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneur Satyen V Kothari, who is also the co-founder of payment gateway Citrus Pay, which was acquired by PayU in 2016 for $130 million. He has previously founded marketing automation firm Trapezo and e-commerce firm Lotus White, among others.

Initially started as a niche bill payments and expense service, Cube Wealth helps manage investment portfolios and provides investment advice from SEBI-registered advisors. The app offers members wealth creation, automated savings, and expense management.

[caption id="attachment_126840" align="aligncenter" width="501"] Cube Team with Kothari (Image - Cube @ Facebook)[/caption]

Acording to Kothari, Cube Wealth is aiming to becomes profitable by the time it goes for a Series B fundraise, that is roughly 18 months from now.

“We are targeting the upper middle class segment of users who have an income of ₹10 lakh per annum and above and want to make financial planning easy and jargon-free,” said Kothari, in a statement given to LiveMint.com.

The startup currently employs 15 people, mostly engineers, and will look to hire more in the next year, although it targets at keeping the employee count below 50. The Cube team comes with a background in digital payments, personal finance, and design. They have worked with market giants like Apple, Frogdesign, Yahoo!, Intuit, Citrus Pay, American Express, HSBC Bank, Disney, Zynga and First Data to hone our skills for Cube.

The Cube team has previously released a mobile app for bill payments called, 'Cube Bills', that has garnered over 2.5 million downloads and exceptional ratings in the App Store and Google Play store.

Source - LiveMint

500 Startups To Invest in Dozen of Indian Startups

500 Startups, a Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai in 2010, is on its way to make at least 10-12 investments in the Indian startup industry this year. This comes after the global venture capital seed fund went through a slump in the South Asian country. Some of 500 Startups' global micro funds having already started making investments in the Indian subcontinent this year.

According to a statement given by Shalini Prakash, head, India investments and operations, 500 Startups to ET, the fund is on the verge of making seven deals in totality, starting with the investment in Spoyl, a used-goods marketplace in December 2016.

The ET report revealed that the investment in the used-goods marketplace comes through 500 Distro, which is a global micro fund under the 500 Startups umbrella, its first in the Indian subcontinent. 500 Fintech, another global micro fund also made its first investment in the South Asian country with Ftcash, a Mumbai-based payments company which facilitates digital payments for small and medium merchants.

According to Prakash, 500 Startups priority for now is to invest in more and more companies in the Indian subcontinent. "Several of our other micro funds, such as 500 Fintech, 500 Distro and 500 Durians, apart from the 500 Startups Fund itself, are looking at India to invest," she said to ET.

The Silicon Valley headquartered fund has invested in more than 60 Indian startups in its five year long journey in India so far. The 500 Startups global venture capital seed fund started investing in India in 2012, and witnessed its highest number of investments two years ago in 2015, when it did more than 20 deals in the South Asian country.

However, in 2016, the fund decided to slow down its activity in India by making a few accelerator deals and the Spoyl deal in December last year. This was mainly because the fund was in the process of launching a $25 million India-focused micro fund. Though the firm had announced the $25-million India-focused 'Kulfi' fund in early 2016, but it never went through. The fund was reportedly put on hold because of the changes in taxation and regulations. Additionally, 500 Startups also saw the departure of its partner Pankaj Jain from the firm, who was also heading the Kulfi fund.

But, according to Prakash, the fund was never taken ahead largely because the global venture capital seed fund was “recalculating its strategy”, while also closely “watching global events like Brexit and the US elections." She also added that tax and other problems were the smaller factors.

Some of 500 Startups’ successful investments in the Indian subcontinent include Little Eye Labs, which was acquired by Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and ZipDial, which was eventually sold to Twitter. The fund has witnessed a total of five exits in India so far.

Fintech Startup ftcash Raises Pre-Series A Funding from IvyCap Ventures and 500 Startups

Riding high on a rapid growth trajectory, ftcash, one of India’s fastest growing financial technology ventures, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a pre-Series A round from venture capital firms IvyCap Ventures and 500 Startups. The fintech start-up will utilize the newly-raised capital in developing products in the payment and loan categories, scaling annual transactions to INR 1,500 crores and disbursing loans to merchants upwards of INR 150 crores. In addition, ftcash will use the funds to drive its expansion plans and scale up operations in Mumbai, Surat, Jaipur and Pune. Maintaining a consistent growth rate of 30-40% month-on-month, ftcash, with its unique business model, has emerged as one of the most promising companies in the Indian fintech market.

ftcash aggregates all payment methods including credit/debit cards, net banking, various mobile wallets, UPI and PayPal to create an open architecture-based platform for merchants to initiate digital payments. The company primarily serves micro-merchants, MSMEs, home-based entrepreneurs, mom and pop stores and large corporates with a merchant base. ftcash facilitates both payments and loans for merchants and allows them to repay loans directly through the platform.

Commenting on the announcement, Sanjeev Chandak, Co-founder and CEO, ftcash, said, “Our business model finds its synergies in payments and loans together as a unified tool to serve and engage with small merchants. However, we have only just scratched the surface as far as capitalizing market opportunities is concerned. We are thankful to IvyCap Ventures and 500 Startups whose faith in our vision will take us a step closer to achieving our goals. Their support will enable us to further accelerate our business operations and set the stage for ftcash to establish itself as an undisputed leader in the high-growth fintech market.”

“Having invested in ftcash since its early stages, we have seen the company achieve remarkable growth in a very short time. The company’s one-of-a-kind business model along with the team’s vision has displayed immense potential, leading to this long-term relationship between our firm and ftcash,” said Vikram Gupta, Founder and Managing Partner, IvyCap Ventures.

Sheel Mohnot, Partner, 500 Startups commented, “The Indian start-up ecosystem is an exciting place for investors and VCs. ftcash has established itself as one of the most innovative companies today in the fintech sector. Through our association with the company, we aim to help the company unlock the vast market potential for its product, possibly on a global scale.”

An innovative fintech startup leveraging technology to bring about market disruption, ftcash is backed by PayPal and has previously won several awards and recognitions across the globe for its differentiated approach.

Quickli Raises Follow-on Funding From AVG & 500 Startups

Quickli&Technologies, a same‐day‐delivery startup headquartered in Gurgaon announced today that it has raised undisclosed follow on round. The round has been led by 500 Startups and Asia Ventures Group, participated by all previous investors.

Founded by Rohan Diwan and Sudhanshu Aggarwal in 2015 to help local retailers, businesses, and eCommerce companies deliver products to customers on the same day orders come in.

“With AVG, we saw a great opportunity to bring hands on investor that will significantly enhance our understanding of building global businesses.” Says Sudhanshu

Same day delivery continues to experience a massive growth and demand not just from food and grocery but also from new sectors like healthcare, gifting and replacement parts. “We’ve seen many companies in this space globally but the economics and execution that these guys have demonstrated is incredible” says Kai Kux, Managing Director at AVG

The funding round comes less than a year after the previous round and will be used to intensify Quickli’s quest for domination. “Delhi NCR continues to be our top priority however we will be looking at expanding to other cities soon as we have well‐developed market insights and created our technology solutions to scale” Rohan says.

Globally there are some companies that are emerging big winners in the same day delivery space like Deliv, backed by UPS in the US and China’s Dada and SHBJ, backed by Alibaba while it remains to see how the Indian ecosystem unfolds in the next coming months.

The platform counts Airtel, Reliance Fresh, KFC, Innerchef, Pharmeasy among others as its clients and digitally tracks the order lifecycle to charge the businesses based on kilometer travelled and time spent on an order and compensate the riders on the same metric, charging a fee on each order.