Rupeek raises $60 million from Binny Bansal, GGV Capital and others

Rupeek did not disclose the break-up of investment by funders or its valuation, but sources close to the deal pegged the five-year-old start-up's valuation at $300 million.

Rupeek, a fintech app that lets people secure loans against gold, has raised $60 million in its latest funding round, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. 

Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal (pictured) has put in money. So has top Silicon Vall­ey investor GGV Capital along with Bertelsmann India Inve­stments, KB Investments and Tanglin Venture Partners. Exi­s­­ting investors Sequoia India and Accel Part­ners also participated in the round.  Rupeek did not disclose the break-up of inve­stment by fun­ders or its valuation, but so­u­r­ces pegged the five-year-old start-up’s valuation at $300 million.

Rupeek is a non-banking financial services company set up in 2015 by Sumit Maniyar. Essent­ially a modern-day lending app, Rupeek lets people take loans against their gold assets. It claims that the process takes about 30 minutes to finish, and is entirely done online. 

After the user completes the initial know-your-customer (KYC) formalities, Rupeek sends an executive to survey the gold at the applicant’s home or bank locker facility. Once approved, the loan is transferred directly to the applicant’s bank account.

“I am excited about how Rupeek is opening up access to formal credit for a large base of users. Its strong customer proposition and approach of partnering banks is truly a game changer for the unorganised gold loans space in India,” said Bansal.

Bansal had earlier invested $20 million in insurance start-up Acko in November. His other bets include robotics firm GreyOrange, data platform Mobikon, medical start-up SigTuple, cancer-screening start-up Niramai Health Analytix, and dairy internet-of-things company Stellapps.

After exiting Flipkart in the late 2018, Bansal moved to Singapore, and currently heads technology consultancy business xto10x Technologies. According to reports, he may also be planning to launch his own venture capital fund.

His investment in Rupeek is in sync with his larger focus on fintech. The start-up claims it hands out loans averaging $28 million a month and has expa­nded its service to 10 cities, inclu­ding all major metros. Since it does not have physical bran­ches, it is able to offer loans at relatively lower in­terest rates than the market average, claims Rupeek. It also offers flexible repayment options. “Rupeek has turned a family’s dormant assets into an easy way to get a loan at affordable rates to grow its small business or pay for emergency needs,” said Hans Tung, managing partner at GGV Capital. He is frequ­ently seen in the Forbes’s Mi­das List. 

“With a marketplace of agents, Rupeek enables big Indian banks to offer competitive gold loan products at the privacy of customers’ homes by sending agents to people’s homes and depositing the gold at the nearest branch of the partner bank that offered the loan,” he said.

Rupeek, which lends from its own books, also has banking partners that co-lend. ICICI Bank, Federal Bank, and Karur Vysya Bank are currently in this list.

“We have seen a massive transformation in the fintech sector that provide potential opportunities to partner banks,” said Rupeek’s Maniyar.

“Our plan is to scale existing and newer channels for gold monetisation. We will use the fresh funds to invest in technology, customer acquisition and work towards improving the accessibility of credit in the country.”