Credit card management solutions startup Kiwi raised $6 million in pre-seed from Nexus Venture Partners, Stellaris Venture Partners, and a host of angel investors.
Kiwi, founded by Siddharth Mehta (ex-CEO of Freecharge), Mohit Bedi (ex-Axis Bank & PayU), and Anup Agrawal (ex-business head of LazyPay), is a mobile app platform for making payments using credit cards or straight from accounts. By issuing RuPay Cards in collaboration with banks, the firm claims to be the first app to offer ‘Credit on UPI’ service.
Although the app is not expected to be available until mid-May, the website is ready for users to register and join the waitlist.
Anup Agarwal, speaking about digital transactions vs credit card access in India, told Inc42 that while digital transactions have expanded significantly over the previous five years, not every Indian has access to credit cards. As a result, Kiwi is looking forward to filling that void in the Indian financial sector.
“The funds will be used for product marketing and analysing where we stand in the entire chain,” Agarwal added. Though we have not set a target for this fiscal year, we anticipate onboarding at least 2 million users over the next eighteen months.”
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently approved integrating RuPay Credit Cards to UPI. To enable Kiwi users to take advantage of this benefit, the firm will provide users with RuPay credit cards.