Bengaluru-based fintech FamPay has raised $38 million in its Series A round led by Elevation Capital. General Catalyst, Rocketship VC, Greenoaks Capital and existing investors Sequoia Capital India, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital and Venture Highway also participated in the new round.
This investment makes it one of the largest Series A round in India and brings FamPa’s to-date raise to $42.7 million.
Founded by IIT graduates Sambhav Jain and Kush Taneja, FamPay enables teenagers, who have limited options to open a bank account in India at a young age, to make online and offline payments.
The startup also works on providing financial literacy to teenagers through gamification, which makes lessons about money fun for youngsters.
After gathering the consent from parents, FamPay provides teenagers with an app to make online purchases, as well as plastic cards — the only numberless card of its kind in the country — for offline transactions. Parents credit money to their children’s FamPay accounts and get to keep track of high-ticket spendings.
“FamPay is creating a market segment that a lot of brands don’t focus on today. With the rapid growth, we saw our users loving the product simply because we gave them something they did not have before. FamCard is the first card a teen ever holds and they remember it as their first bicycle or phone. It’s their first step at being responsible with money, their first step into adulthood. We plan to stay with them from this first step throughout their financial journey by evolving the product as they grow,” FamPay Co-Founder Kush Taneja said.
The startup, which has amassed over 2 million registered users, plans to deploy the fresh capital to expand its user base and product offerings, and hire engineers. It is also looking for people to join its leadership team.
“With around 40% of the Indian population being below 18, every year millions of new teenagers will start using their first smartphone and FamPay envisions becoming their go-to brand…,” FamPay Co-Founder Sambhav Jain said.
It’s the most tech-savvy generation as they haven’t seen a world without the internet. They adapt to technology faster than any other target audience and their first exposure with the internet comes from the likes of Instagram and Netflix. This leads to higher expectations from the products that they prefer to use. We are unique in approaching banking from a whole new lens with our recipe of community and gamification to match the GenZ vibe, Jain added.
“We have been extremely impressed by FamPay’s product innovations, growth trajectory and customer love – all early signs that FamPay is destined to become the destination app for GenZ and gateway for their access to fintech and beyond. India today has a sizable population of 250M adolescents and we believe that catering to this unserved audience with innovative products contextualised to their needs and behaviours will create a very valuable business”, said Mridul Arora, Partner, Elevation Capital.
In March 2020, the company announced raising US $4.7 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, Venture Highway, Sequoia Capital India, and Global Founders Capital, as well as angel investors, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Robinhood co-founder Vladimir Tenev, CRED founder Kunal Shah and Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau. The founders were also recently featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2021 list.
