India has seen a surge of inclusive tech startups in the financial services space off late. And there has been a proportionate surge in the money being raised by such companies. Confirming that once again today is EpiFi, founded about eight months ago by two Google Pay (formely Google Tez) co-founders. The company has announced a $13.2M seed from the likes of Sequoia, for its open banking platform.
EpiFi is a neo-banking platform founded by Sujith Narayanan and Sumit Gwalani, former Google Pay executives who built and launched Google’s payment service in the Indian market which was earlier called Google Tez.
The startup’s $13.2 million round was led by a bunch of marquee investment firms, including Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital and Hillhouse Capital. It also raised funding from Cred founder Kunal Shah and David Velez, founder of Brazil’s Nubank, a neo-banking giant.
This seed round values the company $50 million at a time when the startup is in stealth mode and is yet to launch its product in the market. The company is working on a neo-banking platform that will focus on serving millennials in India. It aims to help users better understand how they are spending money, and guide them to make better investments and increase their savings.
It’s noteworthy that the app has not been launched yet but Sujith Narayanan says that epiFi application will be released in a few months. Commenting on the funding, he said: “We will be using the capital to further build out our technology stack, bring on board a crack team of people, as well as towards early marketing and consumer adoption. The product will be out in a few months from now. We are currently in a pre-launch stage.”
EpiFi currently has an employee strength of about 20, who largely come from global tech giants such as Google, PayPal and Netflix. The service from the company will include savings account and debit card facilities but the founders have not shared more details.
