Zerodha's Nikhil Kamath on funding woes for fintech firms: 'If you were in Bangalore...'

Nikhil Kamath said funding to fintech firms has been slashed by about one-fourth of what was being raised a few years ago.

Nikhil Kamath, the co-founder of stock broking platform Zerodha, recently highlighted that fintech companies are going through a "bad moment" and getting funds has become "significantly harder".

“I'll be candid about this, fintech is having a bad moment. Especially in India if you are a fintech company today compared to say two years ago, access to Capital has gotten significantly harder," Business Today quoted the billionaire as saying.

Kamath added that the biggest problem faced by the fintech sector is the lack of adoption by users leading to a dampening of investor interest.

“The story on the ground is this way could be in big part because people overestimated how quickly adoption will happen for fintech products in India,” he said, adding that funding to fintech firms has been slashed by about one-fourth of what was being raised a few years ago.

“If you were in Bangalore trying to raise money for a fintech company today, if you got a Series A check which was X one year ago, today you will probably get 0.25X,” Nikhil Kamath said.

As for his own investments, in November the Zerodha co-founder invested in financial content creator Sharan Hegde and Raghav Gupta’s start-up, ‘The 1% Club’. The start-up secured Rs 10 crore in pre-series A funding from Gruhas, a venture capital firm co-founded by Kamath. Other investors included Abhijeet Pai from the Puzzolana Group.

In October he also launched a funding and mentorship programme for entrepreneurs under 22, the WTF Fund. The fund will back young entrepreneurs working in the beauty, home, fashion, and lifestyle segments.

“Introducing the #WTFFund! Young entrepreneurs under 22 years of age can now grab the opportunity to secure funding and receive mentorship in the home, fashion, beauty or lifestyle sectors…,” said Kamath in a social media post.

Read more: Nikhil Kamath's 'WTF is' makes it to list of best podcasts of 2023. His reaction