Fintech startup Bold Finance raises $1.5 million in seed funding led by Kae Capital, Others

• ByStartupStory     |    November 11, 2022

The Seed round of funding for the fintech firm Bold Finance was $1.5 million, which was led by Kae Capital, and existing investor Antler India as well as a number of angel investors participated, including Nitin Gupta (Uni Cards), Ishpreet Gandhi (Stride Ventures), Shashikant Dola (McKinsey & Company), Tushar Mehndiratta (Avail Finance), and Vadiraj Kulkarni (CEO, ITC PSPD), amongst others.

Bold Finance is an investment firm that was established by Nikhil Jain and Durgesh Suthar, both of whom graduated from IIT Roorkee and have worked previously for illustrious companies such as ITC, McKinsey, and Flipkart, xto10x, respectively.

 It is headquartered in Mumbai. When Bold Finance was first conceived, its overarching mission was to improve access to credit for people living in tier-two and tier-three cities who fall into the lower and middle-income income brackets. This was to be accomplished with the goal of making it possible for Bharat to achieve financial independence. Gold loans are the first product that Bold Finance has to offer.

“Gold loan is generally a distress or a working capital loan, whereby consumers need it immediately,” said Nikhil Jain, co-founder of Bold Finance. In this kind of scenario, the most important things for clients to have are easy access in hyper-local neighborhoods, extended operation hours, and cheap lending rates. It is in the best position possible to serve consumers like these and to provide loans that are trustworthy, safe, and delivered quickly by Bold Finance. In the unorganized market, customers have a poor user experience due to high-interest rates (>30%), no documentation, and lack of transparency. Bold Finance is building a tech platform and operations layer that empowers jewelers to work with multiple banks to dispense loans in a regulated manner and grow their businesses sustainably. Currently, 65% of the $130 billion gold loan market is unorganized and managed by pawnbrokers, money lenders, jewelers, HNIs, etc.

About Bold Finance

Bold Finance’s unique business model of placing themselves between banks, jewelers, and customers allows them to achieve deeper penetration and wider geographical reach in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. As a result, the company has been able to aggressively open 50+ branches in Mumbai suburbs within a short span of 7 months. This has allowed the company to aggressively open 50+ branches in Mumbai suburbs within a short span of 7 months.

Follow Startup Story