Groww raises $83 million at a valuation of over $1 billion, enters unicorn club

Groww's platform helps users invest in stocks, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, IPOs and gold.

Investment platform Groww has raised $83 million in its Series D funding, in a round led by Tiger Global, with existing investors such as Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital, YC Continuity, and Propel Venture Partners also participating in the round.

Groww confirmed that its valuation has crossed $1 billion, thus entering the unicorn club.

It's an unprecedented week for the Indian startup ecosystem as four startups have turned unicorns this week.

While PharmEasy, Meesho, and CRED became unicorns (a privately funded firm with a valuation of over a billion dollars) this week, the others who made the list this year include Digit Insurance, Innovaccer, Infra. market and Five Star Business Finance.

India has now seen eight unicorns emerge in the first four months of the year, compared to 11 in all of 2020.

Founded in 2017 by four former executives of Flipkart - Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal - Groww's platform helps users invest in stocks, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, IPOs, and gold.

The startup now wants to foray into derivatives trading, build out its offering to help investors buy US-listed stocks, and debt instruments such as government securities.

"We will look at futures and options (F&O) trading and debt. The option to invest in NASDAQ stocks is in beta, there is a lot of demand for this. The Internet IPOs in India slated this year will also create interest. We will also be expanding our team" Keshre told Moneycontrol in an interaction.

Groww currently has more than 1.5 crore registered users. It said 18 lakh demat accounts were opened on its platform since June 2020 and that it is seeing more than 2.5 lakh new systematic investment plans (SIPs) every month.

The startup competes with Zerodha, Upstox, Paytm Money, and with players such as Scripbox and IndWealth.

According to a report from Credit Suisse, accelerated digitisation during the pandemic with regards to the boarding process with video eKYC and Aadhaar-based authentication has helped achieve rapid growth in the space.

New-age fintech/discount brokers have accelerated market share gains and now command 36 percent of total active broker accounts in India. On the other hand, traditional brokers have added customers, but the pace has been slower, which is reflected in the loss of market share.