India’s wealth management company smallcase has raised $50 million in its Series D round of funding led by Singapore-based venture capital firm Elev8.vc, to diversify its product offerings in a rapidly growing retail investing market.
The round, which also saw participation from State Street Global Advisors, Niveshaay AIF, Faering Capital, and Arkam Ventures, comes four years after smallcase raised its $40-million Series C round in 2021 led by Faering Capital, at a valuation of around $200 million.
With the new fundraising, smallcase aims to expand its product offerings in a country to cater to the growing retail investor base that is seeking simplified, transparent, and diversified investment solutions. It plans to integrate asset classes like mutual funds and fixed income in its platform.
Launched in 2016 in Bengaluru by Vasanth Kamath, Anugrah Shrivastava, and Rohan Gupta, smallcase works with capital market participants (including brokerages, advisors and digital wealth platforms) to offer investment products called ‘smallcases’.
smallcases are portfolios of stocks or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) created by financial experts and advisors.
Other investors in smallcase include Amazon, Premji Invest, Peak XV, Blume Ventures, Beenext, DSP Group, and Arkam Ventures.
In 2022, DealStreetAsia reported that credit card management and bill payments platform Cred was in advanced talks to buy smallcase for about $400 million. However, the deal fell through after six months of negotiations as the companies could not agree on valuation, The Ken reported.
Recently smallcase expanded its offerings through a joint venture with stock broking firm Zerodha to launch an asset management company focused on index funds and ETFs.
For Elev8, backed by KB Investment, South Korea’s largest financial conglomerate, and Venture Catalysts, smallcase is its third investment after IDfy, a premier identity verification platform, and Astrotalk, India’s astrotech platform.