Atlanta-based Greenlight sets up Development Centre in Bengaluru

said Tim Sheehan, co-founder and CEO of Greenlight

Fintech player Greenlight has set up its first India Development Centre (IDC) in Bengaluru and is planning to hire more than 100 employees in the next 12 months across product, design, engineering, data analytics and operations.

“The development centre in Indis is to help the company with product development and the functions from here will be for almost all our core operations…the talent pool here is very rich and almost all the core functions will be handled from here,” said Timothy Sheehan, cofounder and CEO of Greenlight in an interaction with Moneycontrol.

The fintech firm has so far hired around 40-50 people for the India office, the firm has a total headcount of around 500 employees.

“The Greenlight India Development Center will help support the company’s next phase of growth as it continues to expand its suite of family banking, education, and safety products and reach millions more families,” He added.

The Greenlight IDC will be led by Sunil Shirguppi, who joins Greenlight as SVP and Country Head, overseeing all India operations, growth, and expansion. Shirguppi has more than 20 years of experience in building engineering teams for global brands like Goldman Sachs and LinkedIn.

“All the functions in the US will pretty much be replicated here in India as well and to begin with we will be building data analytics, data management, machine learning, and product development and management teams here for now,” said Shirguppi.

The Atlanta, Georgia-based fintech company Greenlight was founded in 2014 by Johnson Cook, Timothy Sheehan. Greenlight offers debit cards for kids and credit cards for parents, and safety features for the whole family.

Through its subscription product, parents can automate allowance, manage chores, set flexible spending controls, and invest for their family’s future. The idea is for the kids and teens to learn to earn, save, spend wisely, give, and invest at an early age. Families can enable features like location sharing, SOS alerts, and crash detection with automatic 911 dispatch.

To date, Greenlight has raised more than $550 million from leading investors like Andreessen Horowitz, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, Wellington Management, TTV Capital, Drive Capital, Canapi Ventures, Relay Ventures, and others.

Greenlight is also looking to enter the Indian market in the longterm, Sheehan told.

“We don’t want to treat every market the same, we want to take time to analyse and then enter. India is definitely very exciting and we are studying the use cases and the customizations. We will take time to study the market and then enter,” Sheehan said.

Greenlight has partnerships with technology companies and financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Amazon.

Greenlight claims to be serving more than 6 million parents and kids, who have collectively saved more than $400 million and invested more than $30 million toward their financial futures.