Open finance startup Upswing raises $4 million from QED Investors

Upswing Financial Technologies, an open finance B2B ecosystem enabler, has raised $4 million from marquee global fund QED Investors and other renowned fintech founders.QED

The funding will be used by Upswing in building plug-and-play platforms for open finance and help fintech and consumer tech players offer financial services seamlessly. The company is working with a few leading banks on the stack which will go live in a phased manner in 2022.

Anupam Bagchi, Co-Founder, Upswing, highlighted that every company has an opportunity to extend financial services to make banking experiences more consumer-centric. He said that in this decade of banking, consumers will opt to access their financial services from any digital interface, which may necessarily not belong to a bank. “Upswing’s open finance-as-a-service platform is highly customizable, simple and modular and will significantly reduce the integration efforts of consumer tech players to launch financial products like savings accounts, deposits, and lending services.”

Sandeep Patil, Partner and Head of Asia at QED Investors, said they are thrilled to join Upswing on this journey. “In the coming decade, consumer companies will ubiquitously offer banking and financial products. Upswing will be a vital ecosystem player providing consumer-centric solutions as well as the right compliance and security infrastructure. Anupam and Nihar bring deep sector experience and complementary expertise. We have no doubt that they will assemble an all-star team to tackle this vital mission.”

Nihar Gupta, Co-Founder, Upswing, said they feel a deep understanding of the banking world is a prerequisite to making a nuanced open finance platform. “Our extensive understanding of banking systems and fintech needs will help us in building platforms, which will essentially empower the financial institutions with greater reach. It will allow consumer tech players to offer differentiated financial products in a much shorter timeframe of weeks instead of months, sometimes even years.”

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Leading fintech founders like Kunal Shah of Cred; Jiten Gupta of Jupiter; Rajan Bajaj of Slice; Lalit Keshre of Groww; Anurag Sinha of One Card; Shivashish Chatterjee of DMI Finance, Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal, Sumit Gwalani, and Sujith Narayanan of Epifi also participated in the round, reaffirming the need to build an ecosystem of open finance.

The round also saw participation from funds like  Better Capital, Amara VC, Multiply Ventures, Capier Investments, Utsav Somani from AngelList.

Prior to Upswing, Anupam and Nihar were senior career bankers with institutions including Kotak, Axis, Standard Chartered and NPCI. They also helped build neobank Jupiter in their leadership roles.