Scapia, the travel credit-card startup, is in talks to raise Rs 290-340 crore ($35-40 million) in a fresh round led by Peak XV Partners, as the company looks to double down on offerings like personal loans and travel insurance to grow its customer base, sources in the know told Moneycontrol.
Existing investors such as Elevation Capital, Binny Bansal’s fund 3State Ventures and Z47 (formerly known as Matrix Partners India) are also likely to participate in the round, the sources added.
“Scapia is commanding a valuation of around Rs 1,250-1,500 crore, or about $150-180 million, during the current round, slightly higher than Rs 800-850 crore ($100 million) previously,” one of the persons cited above told Moneycontrol.
To be sure, negotiations between Scapia and Peak XV Partners are still on and the deal contours may change slightly as talks progress.
Scapia and Peak XV Partners did not reply to Moneycontrol’s queries.
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The talks of a new fundraise come a year after Scapia raised $23 million (around Rs 195 crore) from Singapore-based Tanglin Venture Partners, Elevation Capital, Z47 and Binny Bansal’s fund 3State Ventures in November 2023.
During that time, Scapia founder Anil Goteti, who was previously the former senior vice president (SVP) at Flipkart, had said the company will look to expand its suite of offerings, onboard more banking partners apart from Federal Bank, and also increase its customer base.
“There is very good demand from metro (cities) and Tier-I (regions) but we are also seeing traction from (other) deeper parts…which is a great sign of how our country is growing and the disposable income rising across the country. We are placed well in this scenario,” Goteti had told Moneycontrol in November 2023.
Growing fintech portfolio
Scapia will also become part of Peak XV Partners’ growing fintech portfolio if talks between the two materialise.
In India, Peak XV Partners already backs large companies like Cred, Pine Labs and several others across the fintech spectrum including credit card startups such as Jupiter and One Credit Card which compete more closely with Scapia.
Goteti founded Scapia in 2022 his previous startup did not take off. In 2021, Goteti founded Protonn, a platform built for independent professionals like lawyers and graphic designers to launch their businesses online or create content.
Goteti, however, shut down the business and returned the capital to its investors in 2022 as the company was not able to find the right product-market fit (PMF).
He then went on to start Scapia. The company has raised over $30 million (Rs 240 crore) since being founded over two years ago. A good chunk of the capital has come from Goteti’s previous connections at Flipkart, where he worked for over eight years during the time it was run by the Bansals.
Tanglin Venture Partners, which was among the first few backers of Scapia, counts Binny Bansal (Flipkart co-founder), Kalyan Krishnamurthy (Group CEO, Flipkart) and Sujeet Kumar (co-founder of Udaan, former Flipkart) as its limited partners (LPs) or fund sponsors.
3State Ventures, another Scapia backer, is a fund run by Binny Bansal who has worked with Goteti in the past. Similarly, PhonePe founders Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari and Curefoods’ founder Ankit Nagori, have also worked at Flipkart during the same time as Goteti and later became angel investors in his company.
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