 "Zomato, Investors, savings, young investors")
When 24-year-old Rajesh Swarup went hunting for a fixed deposit (FD), he wanted a better interest rate than the one his bank was offering. A friend sent him a link to Stable Money, a marketplace that lets users compare FDs across banks and non-banks and book them without having to open an account with each institution. He booked an FD with Suryoday Small Finance Bank, via Stable Money.
Many youngsters like Swarup are flocking to new-age platforms — Groww, Scripbox and KreditBee are some others — as they explore their investment, credit and wealth-creation goals. ‘“It also appealed to me as it was like ordering food from Zomato,” said Swarup, a Gurgaon-based marketing consultant.
For Swarup, the proposition felt almost too neat — one app, multiple FD issuers, quick onboarding and easy comparisons of FDs across banks. The process didn’t involve checking different bank apps or the familiar plea, ‘please open an account first’. He filled in the KYC (know your customer) details, transferred the money directly to the bank, and soon received confirmation from the bank itself.
Simpler, cheaper
That captures a larger shift in India’s wealth landscape. Platforms built to sell mutual funds or make stock trading intuitive are now expanding their portfolio and reach among new investors.
The number of startups increased from 244 in 2023 to 279 in 2024, due to a post-covid surge, before cooling down to 134 as startups faced a funding squeeze amid unrealistic valuations.
Sidharth Diwan, partner, financial services, PwC India said: “New-age investing and trading platforms have essentially done to wealth management what UPI did to payments—made it simpler, cheaper, and more democratic. They’ve shifted the industry from a relationship-driven world to technology-driven, which can be accessed by anyone from anywhere.”
For decades, India’s wealth creation journey was tethered to institutions: The bank branch, the agent, the family accountant or the neighbourhood broker. Distribution thrived on relationships, not apps or platforms. But now, as Neha Singh, co-founder, Tracxn, which tracks startup activity, said, “With $2.47 billion invested across trading and investment platforms till date, the Indian startup ecosystem has witnessed an emergence of a number of prominent companies like Angel One, Zerodha, Upstox, among others.”
It’s also levelled the playing field. Whether a first-time investor in a tier-2 town or an equity trader in Mumbai, you don’t need to depend only on your bank platform for saving or investment decisions.
Gautam Munish, principal advisor, RA Leasing, a Mumbai-based B2B financial solutions provider, said, “The agility that the new platforms display is unmatched by traditional banks. Though, to be fair, the former are digital natives while the latter have grown via bank branches and direct sales agents networks.”
Diwan added, “New-age platforms are born with digital-first architecture, have higher talent density of engineers, data scientists and product managers, and focus on constant release cycles to upgrade. Traditional institutions, by contrast, spend heavily to maintain legacy systems. While the new platform IT spends go into front-end experience, data and automation.”
That difference appeals to young investors and is in sync with their digital lives.
According to Tracxn, in 2025 alone, this sector attracted $450 million in funding, a growth of 355 per cent over $99 million in 2024. To be sure, the 2025 funding surge was highly concentrated, with Groww and Raise Financial Services together accounting for over 71 per cent of total capital inflows. Groww raised $202 million ahead of its public listing in 2025, while Raise secured $120 million to reach unicorn status in the same year.
Singh added, “This concentration highlights an investor focus on mature, scaled platforms with clear monetization visibility.” Raise, founded in 2021, builds technology-focused platforms for consumers, offering services in investing, wealth management, payments, and insurance.
For a large segment of investors the value lies in guidance, usability, a consolidated portfolio view and convenience, which platforms like Scripbox, Raise, MobiKwik, Groww and others offer. While traditional institutions focus on relationship managers, the new platforms respond with more savvy, customized solutions—like a single dashboard to multiple FDs or actually translating financial goals to products.
For instance, Groww, an investing platform which had a stellar debut on the bourses, began by offering mutual funds and then moved deeper into trading and adjacent credit products. Today it positions itself as a unified digital finance platform.
Harsh Jain, co-founder and COO, Groww said, “We offer a comprehensive, digital-first platform that allows users to invest, trade, and access multiple financial products in one place.” Users can invest in mutual funds, apply for IPOs, trade stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and commodities on exchanges and use an integrated demat account. Beyond investing, Groww offers personal credit, marginal trade funding, and loans against mutual funds.
That breadth matters because investing is rarely linear. A young investor may start with a SIP (systematic investment plan), then venture in equities, apply for IPOs, buy ETFs, and later seek credit against a portfolio. Each step becomes a vehicle to deepen engagement.
Jain said Groww is expanding further. The platform has introduced primary bonds, commodity trading, and Groww Cloud for algo traders. Next, it plans to scale fixed income offerings by launching secondary bonds, add features for pro-traders under its 915.trade platform, and build a wealth-management suite for affluent clients under 'W by Groww’. The company claims it has 75 per cent three-year user retention.
A marketplace for financial assets
While stockbroking and mutual fund SIPs grab the headlines, Stable Money is betting on something less glamorous but vastly larger: fixed income. Bengaluru-based Saurabh Jain, founder and CEO of Stable Money came from a mutual fund background. He said, “But a large sum still sits into fixed income. The innovation wave — KYC, transaction rails, sleek onboarding — had reached mutual funds and stocks. Fixed income, despite being the largest asset class, remained bank branch-heavy and fragmented.”
Stable Money, backed by Fundamentum (backed by Nandan Nilekani), Lightspeed Ventures, Z47 and RTP Global, also offers speed — video KYC, digital receipts, tracking, withdrawal — on a single app.
The Stable Money marketplace currently has 10 banks and three non-banking financial corporations. They include names like IndusInd Bank, AU Small Finance Bank and South Indian Bank. On customer profile, Jain said, “my median customer is age 28.” About 60 per cent of users are young, 13 per cent are women and 13 per cent are senior citizens. The average customer books around ₹3 lakh, with a median tenure of about 30 months; the minimum FD size is ₹1,000.
“The new platforms are more opportunistic, offer hand-holding and advice in a way that attracts new investors to them,” added Munish.
If Groww represents the high-velocity, self-serve end of the spectrum and Stable Money specializes in safety-first fixed income, Scripbox offers full-stack wealth management with an omni-channel model.
Atul Shinghal, founder and CEO of Scripbox said, “We believe wealth is a lifelong multi-generational thing,” said. The company manages more than ₹20,000 crore in assets. It serves around 70,000 families across the country and operates through an app and web platform as well as human channels — contact centres, video calls, and in-person meetings via relationship managers. It has seven offices.
The platform offers mutual funds, fixed deposits, corporate bonds, an RIA (registered investment adviser) business, and portfolio management services—including an in-house PMS of about ₹900 crore.
Scripbox positions itself as a classical wealth manager with a digital backbone that scales the “math and science” of financial planning and asset allocation. Their tool, Shinghal said, “begins with goals and risk appetite, then builds a dynamic asset allocation, then breaks it down into sub-asset classes and fund selection — managed continuously. What makes it scalable is that much of this is systematized, while engagement remains human.”
AI under the hood
Many of the new platforms prefer to have AI in the backend rather than do customer-facing tasks. Shinghal said, “AI belongs inside the machine, not between the client and their money. We believe wealth is one category where humans in the loop are absolutely essential.”
Scripbox uses AI to improve research and data parsing, to make relationship managers more effective via AI-driven CRM, and to speed up code writing through modern developer tools. It also records client interactions with consent to capture nuances, speed up action notes and summarize meetings — practical uses that reduce friction without automating trust.
Even for Stable Money, AI is mostly under the hood. Jain explained, “Between the customer and us, there is no AI as we are still in the building phase. But internally, roughly 30 per cent of code is written with AI assistance.”
Interestingly, traditional banks have the biggest advantage of all: data. Salary credits, spending patterns, loan histories, deposits, life-stage signals. Yet the new platforms often appear more personalized.
Diwan of PwC said, “Traditional BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) companies have rich customer data, but their legacy systems, fragmented data stores turn a strategic asset into an under-utilised resource. New platforms have clean, unified, real-time data and can extract more value from every digital interaction.”
That is why partnerships are also emerging. Groww collaborates with banks and NBFCs for credit products where it handles digital sourcing and partners provide capital. Banks get access to young, high-intent customers at lower acquisition costs; platforms get breadth and better economics.
While new age platforms lean on technology for an enhanced experience and operate under regulations, they are not without their risks. Risks with new-age investment apps include scams (fake ads/tips), and lack of personalized advice (just curated funds). Besides, people have to be reasonably digitally savvy to use the platforms. In India banking apps are used by just around 40 per cent of account holders and penetration of wealth tech and investing apps is even lower, in low single digits.
Shinghal believes new platforms are like Google Maps. “Maps are useful from day one, and improve every time you use them. Wealth platforms are similar: An interface that starts simple, then becomes smarter through iteration and feedback, until it feels indispensable.”
That is likely how the next decade of Indian investing might be won — not by who has the most branches or the loudest celebrity campaign, but by those who can become the default ‘map’ for money, guiding users like Swarup from their first fixed deposit to a lifetime of financial decision-making.
In a league of their own
Assessing new-age investment platforms
Pros
- Have no legacy baggage
- Are digital and AI-natives
- Leverage tech for better pan-India access
- Offer innovative products
Cons
- Anxiety over scams among users
- Fear of hidden charges and fees
- Questions of long-term sustainability in a crowded market
- Traditional banks still score on customer data
Source: Industry
The writer is a New Delhi-based independent journalist
