Pune-based FPL Technologies has raised about $100 million in a new funding round led by Temasek. The Singaporean sovereign fund invested $46.9 million in the fintech startup in a round that was participated by other investors, including Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, QED Holdings, Ocean View Investment and Hummingbird.
Sequoia, Matrix Partners, Hummingbird Ventures and QED also participated in a Series C funding round in January, raising $75 million. Barring QED, the others were also part of the $10 million Series A financing round. This followed a Series B round last year where FPL Technologies raised $35 million.
FPL Technologies’ valuation after the latest fund infusion is approximately $1.25 Bn, which has pitched it into the coveted unicorn club. The other fintech players who are part of this rarefied stratosphere include Open, Oxyzo, and Yubi, taking the total up to 22.
Holding The Right Card
Anurag Sinha, Rupesh Kumar and Vaibhav Hathi, all erstwhile ICICI Bank employees, founded FPL Technologies in 2018. The Pune-based startup operates the OneScore credit score app and issues credit cards under the OneCard brand.
OneScore is an app that helps consumers check and monitor their credit scores and improve them via an AI-based score planner. It launched the Visa-backed metallic OneCard in 2020 in partnership with financial institutions, including IDFC Bank, Bank of Baroda Financial, South Indian Bank, Federal Bank, and SMB Bank. This card does not require fees for joining, annual signup or redemption of rewards points, and FPL hopes this will help it compete against players including Slice, Karbon Card, Uni Card and Kodo Card.
Catering To An Little Tapped Market
According to the ‘India Digital Payments Report’ report by Worldline, the total number of credit and debit cards in circulation by the end of Q1 2022 stood at 991.28 million. Credit cards accounted for 7% of transactions in the first quarter of 2022 but 26% of value, indicating that customers still prefer to use their credit cards for high-value transactions.
After running a survey to evaluate the credit-related behavioural pattern and financial independence among women on its platform, OneScore found that ‘Millennial & Gen Z women were the most ‘credit conscious’ cohorts. It witnessed a 20% surge in women users inspecting their credit score in FY21 vis-à-vis FY20, which indicates a gradual yet steady growth in awareness and credit consciousness among women in India. This highlights the latent opportunity in the space, which FPL is eager to tap.
Earlier this year, Economic Times reported that FPL Technologies has 250,000 OneCard customers and facilitates close to Rs 450 crore in monthly spending across its user base. It looks to scale issuances to 1 million cards by the start of October this year.
Entrackr found that FPL Technologies posted Rs 10.78 crore topline in FY21. Per the company’s annual financial statement filed with the Registrar of Companies, its losses reached Rs 33.15 crore in the FY 2020-21.
