Beams Fintech Fund, Helps Create 2 Soonicorns in the Indian Startup Ecosystem, With a Combined Valuation of $1 Billion

India’s first Growth Stage Fintech Fund backed Niyo & Progcap alongside marquee domestic & global investors in 2022.

Beams Fintech Fund, a leading Fintech focussed Growth Stage Fund will complete the calendar year 2022 on a high having its portfolio companies raised more than $150 Mn at a combined valuation of over $1 bn.

Beams Fintech Fund achieved its first close in March 2022 at $36 Mn corpus & made two investments during the year. Beams has now crossed more than 50% of its target corpus raise of $120 Mn and is in advance stages of making 3 more investments.

Founded by Fintech veteran Sagar Agarvwal & Navin Surya and Founders of Venture Catalysts - Anuj Golecha, Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Anil Jain and Gaurav Jain, Beams primarily invests in Series B & C rounds of Companies operating at the intersection of financial services and technology.

In a year when most Fintech companies struggled to raise capital, both of Beams portfolio companies saw newer rounds from marquee investors. Multiples Private Equity invested in Niyo while Beams invested alongside Google and Tiger in Progcap.

Beams has built a team of 8 investment professionals and more than 10 mentors, advisors, CXOs to help build the portfolio for Beams and create tangible value add for portfolio companies.

Beams has also brought in marquee Financial Institutions as LPs in the Fund including Yes Bank, Infibeams, Capri Global, ECG, etc., to cross pollinate with its portfolio companies.

Beams is being appreciated by the founder community for its strategy of identifying key gaps in the portfolio companies’ accessibility and providing the same in partnership with its LPs. Very similar to Canapi Ventures in the US, Beams will be building the largest ecosystem of by Banks, NBFIs, Insurance Companies and DFIs within India & Outside to create value for its companies.

Beams portfolio companies also created significant impact in 2022. Our Portfolio companies provided access to financial services to over 5 Million Consumers, SME’s and MSME’s with over $1 Billion in loans financed and enabled annualized payments of over $1.5 Billion for the underserved and blue collar workers.

During 2022, Beams has been recognised as one of the most unique upcoming investor in the Indian Fintech space which led to Beams being invited to multiple Global and Pan India Events. Beams was part of the Global Fintech Fest 2022, which is India’s largest Fintech event. Beams was also a part of the Global LP/GP Event, Superreturns at Amsterdam, Singapore and Dubai. Our Managing Partner, Sagar Agarwal was invited to share his views on Growth stage Fintech Investments in India.

“2022 has been an eventful year at Beams. As a relatively new platform in the ecosystem and creating a category focussed fund can be interesting at times, especially in a year that was marked by high inflation, geopolitical tensions and cool-off of the tech ecosystem. However, we have been very fortunate to have such high-quality investors support us. We have achieved more than what we had set out to at the start of the year and are proud to be regarded as India’s first Growth Stage focussed Fintech Fund” said Sagar Agarvwal, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Beam Fintech Fund. 

“CY ’23 looks even more promising & positive for us as markets have corrected significantly both in the private and the public space given us an opportunity to invest with high quality teams and businesses at more attractive prices and our existing portfolio companies are already performing phenomenally well. We expect to close the fund out at a target raise & deploy more than $60-70 mn in CY ’23. We follow a thesis driven approach towards investments & have narrowed down on the following themes for CY ‘23: Embedded Finance/Managed Marketplaces, SAAS Platforms for Banks/FIs, SAAS Platforms for Enterprises, Global Enterprises SAAS, Open Banking & Digital Financial Inclusion” said Navin Surya, Co-founder & Operating Partner, Beam Fintech Fund. 

Beams Fintech Fund is India's 1st Growth Stage Focussed Fintech Fund investing in companies operating at the intersection of Financial Services & Technology. Beams Fintech Fund is backed by Venture Catalysts. Beams is a second Fund for the group, after, 9 Unicorn, a $100 Mn Seed stage Fund launched in ‘20.

Beams Fintech Fund is an offering of Ecosystem, Value Add & Capital for Fintech market leaders of tomorrow. The Fund will create a concentrated portfolio of 10-12 investments by investing $8 -$10 Mn in high quality Fintech founders & companies in their Growth rounds ($50-500 Mn EV). Beams is a thesis driven investor & will focus on following Fintech themes in the Fund: Embedded Finance, Platforms & Technologies for the Incumbents or Disrupting the Incumbents, Global Enterprises SAAS, Open Banking & Digital Financial Inclusion.

With a target size of $100 million, the Fund has been received well & marquee Indian Financial Institutions, Banks, Family offices & Unicorn Fintech Founders are investors in the Fund thus validating the Team, Strategy, Thesis & Opportunity.

Group has invested in 30+ Fintech/FS Companies with $4 Bn+ in portfolio value creation. Founder’s current & past Fintech/FS investments include BharatPe, Dukaan, Flobiz, Klub, Esskay Fincorp, Suryoday, Centrum Forex, MFS Africa, Bank Open, Jai Kisan, GetVantage, Impact Guru, Creditwise, OTO, Liquiloans, Lenden, Junio etc.

The Parent, Venture Catalysts is the largest Network investing platform (6000+ investors) in Emerging Markets today with $225 Mn deployed capital across 180+ investments. Venture Catalysts has ranked top 3 globally for the past 3 years in no of deals.. AUM today is at $325Mn.

Beams Fintech Fund Invests in Progcap, India’s leading Supply Chain Finance company

Beams Fintech Fund, India’s first Growth Stage Fintech Fund, has invested in the Series C round of Progcap, India's leading supply chain finance company. Beams has invested alongside Google, Creations, Tiger and Sequoia in this round. Other investors in this company include GrowX, CIBIL chairman MV Nair, Freecharge co-founder Sandeep Tandon. 9Unicorns & ZNL Growth Fund also participated in the round along with Beams.

Founded in 2017 by Pallavi Shrivastava and Himanshu Chandra, both richly experienced finance professionals with deep knowledge of supply chain and micro finance. Progcap is revolutionizing the way financial credit is delivered to small and medium retailers of the Indian retail economy.

Having worked at Global organizations such as the World Bank and IFC, Pallavi has a nuanced understanding of how innovative financing structures can be used to propel the growth of underserved businesses and how this can be applied in the Indian context. On the other hand, Himanshu comes with deep experience in supply chain finance, having built the supply chain finance portfolio at Standard Chartered Bank.

Supply chain finance is the need of the hour with many companies facing cash flow crunches and unorganized collections processes, Progcap is bridging the gap between distributors and retailers through specialized finance, payments and technology.

Till date, Progcap has disbursed more than $1 billion in loans, grown 4X annually. It has worked with over 700,000 SMBs.

Beams Fintech Fund’s ecosystem and network of LP's, which includes leading Banks and NBFC’s, will look to cross pollinate with Progcap. Beams value add strategy is to cross-pollinate between its LP’s and portfolio companies. Beams will facilitate access to its banking network and open doors to its group’s portfolio of 250+ startups for partnerships, collaboration, and potential acquisition opportunities for Progcap.

Sagar Agarvwal, Managing Partner & Co-Founder of Beams, said, “We are pleased to have backed Pallavi & Himanshu, building one of the fastest growing and disruptive supply chain finance platforms in the country. Supply chain is a deep problem in India with a credit gap of more than $300 Billion and SME/MSME’s require access to capital through innovative financing solutions. We are excited to work with Pallavi and Himanshu on building the future of supply chain finance and payments in India”.

“We are excited to join hands with Beams team to solve challenges faced by MSMEs/SMEs in their financing requirements. Beams has a built an interesting value add strategy towards companies & we are looking forward to working together with them on problems being solved by Progcap,” said Pallavi Shrivastava, Co-founder, Progcap.

About Beams Fintech Fund

Beams Fintech Fund is a Growth Capital Fintech fund for India offering Ecosystem, Value Add & Capital to support the Fintech founders of tomorrow. Beams is backed by India's first and largest integrated incubator, Venture Catalysts, that also has 9Unicorns, a $100 million early-stage sector-agnostic accelerator fund in its stable. Beams Fintech Fund is focusing on investing in growth stage rounds of financial technology companies run by exceptional entrepreneurs. We aim to create the market leaders of the Fintech revolution in India by supporting entrepreneurs in building enterprise solutions for the financial services industry & disrupting the way banking & financial services are traditionally offered to customers & businesses.

Fintech Startup Univest Secures Pre-seed Funding of ~INR 3.8 Cr, in Talks to Raise $4 Mn

The platform clocked ~4000 active retail investors in <5 days of launch

Univest, a fintech startup making an advanced one solution for stock markets, secured funding from angel investors in its pre-seed phase. The fintech platform secured funding worth ~3.8 crores, to be utilized towards product launch and team building.

Univest - the brainchild of Pranit Arora and Avneet Dhamija, was started with the goal to improve ROIs for every stock market investor by solving their problems of: Timely exit from non-performing investments to letting them convert into great investments within a jiffy. Univest has built a unique one stop solution for stock markets which is making the investment journey easy, intelligent, and more rewarding. The fintech platform was incepted in 2022 with the mission to solve a critical problem faced by millions of retailers while exiting a stock investment to ensure maximum return on investment. The launch marked the release of the Univest app 5 days back and has already garnered ~4000 active retail investors.

Having received angel investments worth 3.8 crs, Univest is already in advanced stages of closure of another round, seeking $4 million in its Seed Funding round. The current list of investors include Pritesh Talwar (CEO, Livpure), Aakash Anand (Founder, CEO, BellaVita Organics), Deep Bajaj and Mohit Bajaj (Co-founders, Peebuddy), Saahil Nayar, Ajay Pawah (Co-founder, Fixigo), Rahul Gambhir (CFO, Brookfield), Chetan Nigam (VP, HCL), Neeraj Goswami, and others.

A survey by Securities & Exchange Board Of India (SEBI) indicates that 95% of Indian families prefer investing in Fixed Deposits due to guaranteed returns, as compared to a proportion less than 10% showing interests in mutual funds and stocks. However, the post-pandemic era has witnessed a surge in investments in the stock market, implying a transition in sentiment. Univest offers to guide this population in penetrating stock markets with an approach that incorporates social analytics, technical indicators, financial ratios, company fundamentals, and news-based sentiments that help users make the right decisions and get attractive ROIs.

Reflecting on Univest’s journey so far, Pranit Arora, Co-Founder & CEO, Univest said, “A glaring problem for majority retail investors is the identification of the right time to exit a non-performing stock investment and convert to a better investment opportunity. There is an abundance of information available in markets, but the task of being prescient bears its own challenges. Univest addresses this issue, and has set out on a mission to provide its customers quality, actionable insights on existing portfolios, while leveraging the same knowledge to pinpoint towards new investment opportunities with high ROIs. Our goal is to assist each individual investor’s journey in growing their wealth, while building a community of educated, self-reliant investors.”

Pranit is the Co-Founder and CEO of Univest, where he manages growth, marketing, investor relationships, legal and finance operations. His experience spans across industries such as FMCG, disruptive technology, automotive after-sales and logistics. Pranit brings extensive business strategy experience from working in FMCG sales, business development, trade, marketing, strategy, and has headed sales, growth and marketing teams at Otipy and Gomechanic whereas Avneet, the other cofounder, has led product monetisation for Bookmyshow in the past. Currently, they have a team Univest with 21 professionals, including a Sr. tech leader - Vikash Agarwal, with 17 years of work experience as the CTO.

In its first year of operations post-launch, Univest expects to reach 3 million users, with further plans of expansion through investing in other classes like commodities, mutual funds, investments in startups and exploring SEA markets like Indonesia.

About Univest

Univest is a fintech startup incepted in 2022 by Pranit Arora and Avnit Dhamija, that offers a unique investment ecosystem enabling influencers and investors to discover stocks, research, trade, share information and track stocks through its exclusive platform where investments are made easy, intelligent and transparent. The platform aims to become the one-stop destination for addressing, and working on the challenges of community-based investing globally.

YES BANK Announces Investments in Venture Catalysts Group Funds

Venture Catalysts has also sponsored two platforms – Beams Fintech Fund & 9 Unicorns Accelerator Fund

YES BANK announced today that it has invested with Venture Catalysts Group Funds (Venture Catalysts), which is an integrated incubator that offers funding, mentorship, and network to startup founders from the idea inception stage to the growth stages of the startup journey. The fund has also sponsored two platforms, Beams Fintech Fund that invests in growth Stage companies operating at the intersection of Financial Services and Technology, and 9 Unicorns Accelerator Fund that is an early stage sector agnostic investor.

With these investments, YES BANK aims to further its mission of catering to the ‘Future Tech Businesses of India’, bolster innovation in the technology space including financial sector, and potentially partnering with leading tech startups that Venture Catalysts has invested in — Beams Fintech Fund and 9 Unicorns Accelerator Fund.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Ajay Rajan, Country Head - Transaction Banking , YES BANK said, “We are pleased to partner with Venture Catalysts and the allied platforms – Beams Fintech Fund and 9 Unicorns Accelerator Fund. We believe that this partnership is a step in the direction to becoming the go-to-bank for technology startups. India is at the cusp of a massive growth and the collaboration between banks and tech companies – especially with fintechs - will play a critical role in this journey.”

This partnership aligns with YES BANKs’ long-term growth strategy of strengthening its foothold in India’s growing tech markets by investing in the founders of tomorrow. Collaborating with and supporting tech companies to ideate and experiment on various use cases such as agriculture, healthcare, commerce, education, logistics, open banking, supply chain finance, payments, digital banking, among others has been a key driver of YES BANK’s innovation strategy. YES BANK has been a pioneer in the tech space and was the first Bank in India to open up its APIs to various tech companies in 2015.

Mr. Naveen Surya, Co-founding member, Beams Fintech Fund , said “This partnership is a great beginning for the tech ecosystem. YES BANK has always been a visionary bank and a harbinger of innovation related to anything tech. We hope this will encourage other banks and fintechs in the market to partner with groups like Beams Fintech Fund and 9 Unicorns Accelerator Fund. We are aiming to create a large ecosystem consisting of banks, NBFCs and fintech companies to support the tech ecosystem. We are looking forward to working with YES BANK and bringing positive outcomes for all our portfolio companies and founders.”

Beams Fintech Fund (Beams), a CAT II AIF, was launched at the start of 2022 with a mission to build India’s largest fintech ecosystem. It will be actively investing in innovative technology companies at growth stages in the fintech space in India including in the Embedded Finance, SAAS for Banks & FIs, SAAS for Businesses, Global Enterprise SAAS, Personal Finance Management and Neo Banking space. Beams brings a strong value add approach towards investing as it has been building an ecosystem of fintech players, banks, and NBFCs. Due to its clear vision and ambition, Beams continues to add key strategic investors and leading financial institutions from India and internationally to its roster of investors. Beams is targeting to deploy US$ 180 mn across 10 to 12 investments over the next three years in Series B and C rounds of companies.

9 Unicorns Accelerator Fund (9 Unicorns), a CAT I AIF, launched by the founding members of Venture Catalysts is a sector agnostic VC that aims to disrupt idea stage investing in India. 9 Unicorns has already raised $100 mn and is actively deploying from its maiden fund. It invests seed capital of $300K - $500K in the first round, with larger follow-on capital in fast growing deserving portfolio companies. Along with idea stage investing, the fund participates in a select few growth stage opportunities, generally Series C and beyond.

About YES BANK

YES BANK is a 'Full Service Commercial 'Bank' providing a complete range of products, services and technology driven digital offerings, catering to Retail, MSME as well as corporate clients. YES BANK operates its Investment banking, Merchant banking & Brokerage businesses through YES SECURITIES, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank. Headquartered in Mumbai, it has a pan-India presence including an IBU at GIFT City, and a Representative Office in Abu Dhabi.

Fintech Veterans founded Beams Fintech Fund Announces 1st-Close for its Maiden Fund at INR 270 Cr

Beams will primarily back fast-growing Fintech Companies in their Series B & C rounds

Beams Fintech Fund (Beams), India’s 1st Growth Stage Fintech Fund, founded by Fintech veteran, Sagar Agarvwal, Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain, Gaurav Jain and Venture catalysts, announced today that it has completed the first close of its maiden Fund within three months of its official launch.

(L-R) - Gaurav Jain, Navin Surya, Sagar Agarvwal, Apoorva Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain

The firm has already received commitments of up to INR 270 crores or $36 Mn for the Fund and is in advanced stages of completing the documentation. Beams will back Growth Stage Companies operating at the intersection of Financial Services & Technology (Fintech) sector. The Fund aims to reach the target corpus of INR 750 crores or $100 Mn within the next nine months.

The First Close saw participation from marquee Domestic & International investors including Banks, NBFCs, Fintech’s, Large Family offices, Financial Service ‘s CXOs & Fintech Founders.

Existing investors of Venture Catalysts & 9 Unicorns (first fund from Venture Catalysts) also backed Beams in its first close. The Fund is now in advanced discussions with several Domestic and Global Institutional investors & Family offices for its subsequent closes & achieve its initial target corpus of INR 750 crores or $100 Mn.

The Series B & C oriented fund will primarily invest in 10-12 companies from the Fund and will maintain its Fintech focused theme. Beams follows a Top Down & Bottoms Up approach towards investing. The team has narrowed down 6 major themes within the Fintech space including Embedded finance, Products & Technologies, Enterprise SAAS, Neo banks and Platforms catering to MSMEs.

Beams has already begun its innings by investing in millennial-focused neo-bank, Niyo Solutions Inc last month, alongside Accel and Lightrock India. Founded by veterans in banking and technology — Vinay Bagri and Virender Bisht— Niyo fits perfectly within the fund’s investment strategy of investing in fast-growing, high-quality, growth-stage fintech companies backed by marquee founders.

Anuj Golecha, Co-Founder & Partner, Beams Fintech Fund, said “It’s remarkable for us to achieve a First Close for Beams in just a few months after the official launch. Thanks to our investors. This success in fund raising has come on the back of the track record & the team that we have built for Beams. We are building a strong operating team with a deep experience in the Fintech space for the execution of this Growth Stage investing strategy and founders are appreciating the same.”

Beams has already onboarded Naveen Surya as the Founding team member of Beams. The Fund has also on-boarded several marquee Partners, Founders, Mentors & Advisors including Deepak Ahuja, Dharmesh Gathani, Ronil Sujan, Rakesh Surana, Suumit Shah, Nakul Beri, Sunil Kulkarni to add value to the portfolio companies. The Fund is in the process of augmenting its investment team with strong Fintech & Financial Services experienced investing professionals.

Sagar Agarvwal, Co-Founder & Partner, Beams Fintech Fund, said, “We are very grateful to our investors for believing in our strategy and our ability to create & build India’s first Growth Stage focused Fintech investing Fund. In Beams, we are building a very unique platform that brings together experienced Founders & Institutions to help & cross-pollinate with our portfolio entrepreneurs on strategy, team building and growth”

“With a strong institutional investor interest in Beams, we hope to create more than $25-30 Bn in value for the Fintech ecosystem over the next couple of years.” said Sagar Agarvwal.

Naveen Surya, Fintech Expert Partner, Beams Fintech Fund, said, "These are exciting times for us and validation of the large-scale investing opportunity in the Fintech space in India at Growth Stages. Through this Fund and the platform, we aim to provide investors with a value creation opportunity in the Fintech domain and access to one of the most powerful Fintech networks in India."

India has several sector focused Growth Funds across consumer & health care space such as Fireside Ventures, Sixth Sense Venture, DSG Ventures, Healthquad, Quadria etc but the Fintech space continued its dependence on International Managers such as Ribbit capital, QED, Insight, GGV, General Catalyst, Vitruvian to make growth stage investments in India. With Beams now, we will also have a home-grown Fund primarily investing in the Fintech space in India at Growth Stages.

Beams Fintech Fund is a Growth Capital Fintech fund for India offering Ecosystem, Value Add & Capital to support the Fintech founders of tomorrow. Beams is backed by India's first and largest integrated incubator, Venture Catalysts, that also has 9Unicorns, a $100 million early-stage sector-agnostic accelerator fund in its stable. Beams Fintech Fund is focusing on investing in growth stage rounds of financial technology companies run by exceptional entrepreneurs. We aim to create the market leaders of the Fintech revolution in India by supporting entrepreneurs in building enterprise solutions for the financial services industry & disrupting the way banking & financial services are traditionally offered to customers & businesses.