Fintech startup firm Jar on Friday said it has raised USD 32 million (about Rs 240 crore) in a Series A round funding led by Tiger Global. Rocketship.vc, Third Prime, Stonks, Force Ventures and existing investors, including Arkam Ventures and WEH, also participated in the new round.
Angel investors, including Klarna founder Victor Jacobsson, Suleman Ali of Ali Capital, Shamir Karkal, founder of Sila Money, Byron Ling of Cannan Partners, Joel John of Ledger Prime and Italic founder Jeremy Cai, also participated in the round, Jar said in a statement. “We will be using the fund for growth, building teak and venturing into other financial services,” Jar co-founder and CEO Nishchay AG said.
The Series A round follows a USD 4.5 million Seed funding in late August. The fintech firm focuses on building savings and investment habits of users. The Jar app saves a tiny amount each time a user makes a transaction and puts some money aside as an investment in the digital gold. “Users’ investments in digital gold are backed by physical gold of the same amount and they can choose to withdraw that much gold or liquidate their investments at any time,” the statement said.
Launched in June 2021, the app claims to have over 4 million and records 100 transactions every minute across India. “What we have found is that once people build familiarity with investments, they build a habit to invest more. A habit and discipline is clearly being formed and we see a jump of 20 per cent in investments month over month by users,” Nishchay said. Once the Jar users get more comfortable with investing in digital gold, the startup will offer them more financial instruments to diversify, the company said.
The startup will also deploy the capital to offer users lending and insurance, it added. Jar is bringing new users into the online investing space, starting with digital gold as the first product. We are bought into Jar’s mission of helping users build a daily savings habit, and we’re excited to partner with the team as they scale to millions of customers,” Tiger Global partner Alex Cook said.
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