Indian Neobank Jupiter Raises $86 Million In New Financing Round, Plans To Launch Lending And Wealth Management Services

Jupiter, an Indian neobank, has secured $86 million in a new Series C financing round co-led by Tiger Global, QED and Sequoia Capital India. The new round follows the startup’s August Series B round which saw the company’s valuation rise to $300 million. Following the new round, the neobank is now valued at $711 million.

The new funds will be used to offer its customers lending and wealth management services. The funding round saw participation from MUFG Bank – Japan’s largest bank, 3one4 Capital and Mirae Asset.

Jupiter bank, which was launched in June this year, has taken its place as a market-leading digital-only bank in all of India. The platform boasts of almost half a million users already, with 65 percent of this amount using the platform actively on a monthly basis.

According to Jupiter’s Founder and CEO Jitendra Gupta who previously co-founded fintech startup CitrusPay now owned by PayU, “We are more than doubling transaction volume each month. We should end this month at over $60 million worth of transactions”.

The big question is what is making Jupiter, a digita-only bank that started only “yesterday” to thrive? The thing is, startups are making various attempts of revamping the traditional banking systems in India. They are leveraging on the shortcomings of the traditional system and using it to provide improved services. The problem is, with as much efforts that these startups have inputed, their services still are plagues with peculiar limitations.

For Jupiter, the fintech startup is applying a wider approach to win customers. According to Jupiter, it adds “delight” to the banking experience. This seems to be working. Jupiter provides users with a bank account and a debit card and makes the access  to financial services seamless and super convenient. According to the startup, it is adding 5,000 users every day.

The importance of neobank continue to increase every day. According to analysts at Jefferies, the top 20 neobanks in the world jointly have about 180 million customers, and the number is on the rise. They wrote that the figure “may appear amall overall, but the number is growing fast”.

According to Jupiter’s founder and CEO, the digital-only bank now has over $145 million in its bank and is yet to deploy any capital raised from older rounds.

He added that the startup, which employs about 300 people, will be placing its focus on developing new services for its customers. By April, the startup plans to offer its customers a lending feature. Next year, it will also launch investment products.

“We have sufficient capital to use. We are confident to reach at least 2 million users by the end of next year,” he said.

The lending and wealth management services that Jupiter plans to add promises to take the startup to newer heights as there are a lot of people in need of such services in India. And India has the population. Besides that, Jupiter remains at the lead in the market where it is present.