According to sources privy to the matter, mobile-first credit card brand OneCard’s parent FPL Technologies is in talks with Singapore-based Temasek Holdings to lead a new financing round of the Pune-headquartered startup.
FPL Technologies, the Indian startup that operates OneCard, is set to double its valuation to about $1.5 billion in a new financing round. This comes a month after the Pune-based startup had announced its Series C funding round, wherein it raised $75 million at a post-money valuation of $750 million.
Existing investor QED Investors led the round with Janchor Partners, Sequoia Capital India, Matrix Partners and Hummingbird Ventures. This round came ten months after a Series B round of $35 million, which according to media reports, happened at a valuation of $183 million. The startup’s valuation jumped nearly 4X post the Series C round.
Anurag Sinha, Co-founder and CEO, FPL Technologies, said, “We don’t chase the unicorn status, we are focused on execution. It might happen, but we don’t have any target in mind. We are a three-year-old company, and we want to scale.”
“Most of our investors are long-term investors like QED, Sequoia, Matrix. Some of them have invested in banks as well globally. We keep in talks with the existing investors, we have to ensure that they understand us well. We keep in the negotiations with the investors, as and when the round happens, we will anyway announce, “added Anurag.
Fintech is the flavor of the season
Fintechs across segments and use cases saw recording funding inflow in India in 2021, most of them seeing their valuations jump 3-5X in a single round.
Making sense of this funding frenzy, Sinha explained, “VCs are one of the first ones to look into the market. Three things are driving this trend: the size of the market, the teams who are building these solutions, and execution. Another key factor that’s playing out in India is the government’s role in India through regulations, the RBI setting up a new department for fintech.”
He added, “Over the past 4-5 years, that mindset has changed a lot. In the back end, we are all working with both PSUs and private banks across SME products, savings accounts, personal loans, credit cards, etc. This is giving confidence to VCs.”
OneCard lets the customer borrow money against fixed deposits set up by them in the bank. This secured lending product helps build the consumer’s credit history while reducing the risk of bad loans and thus not needing multiple documents like payslips and others apart from KYC.
“For us, customer experience is key to gaining market share. The tie-ups with multiple banks are needed as different banks have different risk appetites. Depending on this, some customers might not be acceptable to a certain bank but might fit the criteria of the other. This also allows us to diversify our liability side,” Sinha added.
