Bengaluru, July 09, 2019 – Bengaluru based new age digital banking start-up NiYO Solutions has raised US$ 35 million in Series B funding round from Horizons Ventures, Tencent and existing investor, JS Capital. NiYO is founded by banking veteran Vinay Bagri and technology veteran Virender Bisht. NiYO had previously raised US$ 14 million in funding rounds led by Prime Venture Partners. With the current round the total fund raised by NiYO is US$ 49 million.
The latest round of funding will be used to accelerate the development & rollout of new product offerings, to amplify distribution & marketing and to explore expansion into international markets, particularly in emerging economies which offer similar opportunities for digital disruption through a “Neo-bank” concept.
NiYO is already among the largest fintechs in the neo-banking space, presently serving around 1Mn users. With increasing demand and available war chest for rapid expansion, NiYO aims to service 5Mn users in next 3 years.
NiYO co-founder and CEO Vinay Bagri said, “Our core focus on customer value and customer service is paying rich dividends with strong growth across business metrics in the last 12 months. With this fresh round of funding we aim to fortify our service suite and further accelerate our growth.”
Sanjay Swamy, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners: From our first meeting with Vinay and Viren, we were excited by the vision of bringing ‘neo-banking’ experience to the blue collar segment – helping drive the benefits of digitization, financial inclusion and to the hard-working masses in India. We’re delighted to welcome marquee investors who have direct experience with neo-banking and highly scalable digital payments systems around the world, and look forward to the next phase of growth of NiYO.
NiYO aims to create a technology enabled and value-added product & service offering layer over the existing banking infrastructure, to offer a comprehensive digital banking proposition to its retail and SME customer base. This is in line with the global mega trend of ‘open or neo banking’.
NiYO has a large presence in blue collared salaried segment through NiYO Bharat Payroll Solution, where it drives financial inclusion with tech innovations by providing banking services hitherto available only to privileged segment. The product is designed to digitally empower India’s massive blue-collar workforce, primarily in unorganized/ semi-unorganized labour intensive sectors and provide them with a simple yet powerful platform to manage their savings, payments, investments and financial protection (insurance). One example of innovation is NiYO Bharat Mobile App which is available in 8 languages and is probably the only banking app that is speech enabled.
NiYO co-founder and CTO Virender Bisht said “Customer centricity and technology led solutions are the bedrock of our product innovation process. We are thankful to our customers, banking partners and investors for the faith they have shown in our team. With this investment, we are doubling down on our mission to improve our customers’ banking experiences and create value for all stakeholders”.
NiYO is also betting big on the international travel market with its forex solution, NiYO Global Card; with over 26 million Indians travelling abroad in 2018 and poor customer experience on current products, NiYO senses a large opportunity to disrupt the way travellers interact and experience banking. It intends to corner a large share of this market through rapid product innovation and unparalleled customer experience.
