Saving and Investment Startup App Jar on Friday raised $32 million in its Series A financing round led by US-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management.
The newest round, brings Jar’s funding to a total of $36.5 million. The funds will be deployed to develop new financial instruments besides its current offering—digital gold. The startup will also deploy the capital to offer users lending and insurance.
The startup, founded by Nishchay AG, former director and founding member at mobility startup Bounce, and Misbah Ashraf, Founder of community-focused ecommerce platform Marsplay (acquired by Foxy in 2020), was launched in May 2021.
The app allows users to save money by taking a small amount from their everyday online transactions and automatically investing in digital gold.
Users can commit to investing any amount starting from Re 1 and have the option to set up per transaction, daily or one-time mandate as per their choice.
The investments in digital gold are backed by physical gold of the same amount and users can choose to withdraw that much gold or liquidate their investments at any time.
Startup App Jar Acquires a user base of over 4 Million
In less than a year, startup app jar has managed to acquire a user base of over four million, most of whom, according to the founders, are making any kind of investment for the first time in their lives. It processes over 100 transactions per minute and has a pan-India reach.
“We are helping people get comfortable with the idea of investing,” said Startup App Jar Co-founder Nishchay. “What we have found is that once people build a 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 percent in investments month over month by users.”
As the users get “more comfortable” with investing in digital gold, the startup will offer them other financial instruments to diversify.
Rocketship.vc, Third Prime, Stonks, and Force Ventures also came on board as new investors, while the existing backers Arkam Ventures and WEH Ventures contributed in the round. The Series A round follows a $4.5 million seed funding round that took place in August last year.
A clutch of high-profile investors, including Victor Jacobsson (Founder at Klarna), Suleman Ali (Co-founder and General Partner at Ali Capital), Shamir Karkal (Founder at Sila Money), Byron Ling (Partner at Canaan Partners), Joel John (Principal at Ledger Prime), and Jeremy Cai (Founder at Italic) were also participants in the round.
