Consumer fintech startup Bright Money on September 27 secured $62 million in funding in a mix of debt and equity. The equity portion, amounting to $12 million, was led by prominent investors such as Alpha Wave, Hummingbird, and PeakXV. Additionally, the fintech startup raised $50 million in debt, with Encina Lender Finance leading this particular funding round.
The startup plans to utilise the funding towards product building and hiring across teams like product development, technology, analytics, and support functions like compliance and customer service, the company said in a media statement.
Founded in 2019 by a team from McKinsey’s Banking Practice Petko Plachkov and Avi Patchava and former InMobi Data Scientists Varun Modi, Avinash Ramakath, Jay Merwade, Amit Bendale, the company aims to reshape how global retail banks operate driven by big data and AI.
Bright Money's core focus lies in the domains of personal lending and credit cards within the fintech sector. At present, the startup has a strong team of more than 180 employees with a majority of the core product, tech, data, marketing and service teams all based out of India.
"At Bright Money, we exist to give users a path to being debt-free with AI-driven financial planning. Bright Money's intelligent systems help create personalized payment plans along with working as a data-powered assistant in money management” said Modi, Cofounder & CTO, of Bright Money.
The platform has now expanded into refinance lending, and soon into credit cards. The company has currently set up a very strong team in India across all functions, while a smaller team operates out of the US.
In September 2021, the firm raised $31 million led by Peak XV (formerly Sequoia), Falcon Edge and Hummingbird Ventures. Bright Money was a part of the first cohort of Surge, Sequoia India’s scale-up program.
“At Bright Money, we have seen a 6x growth in the last year and now reach hundreds of thousands of users. We believe data is a positive force that can have transformative effects if used effectively," said Avi Patchava, Co-founder of Bright Money.
Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
