India is a country obsessed with gold. Millions of Indians across all the class segments prefer it not just as a stable saving option but also as an asset that could give instant liquidation in case of emergency. Indian households are estimated to be owning over 2500 tonnes of gold that’s currently valued at about half of the country’s nominal GDP. However, much of this gold continues to sit idle at home and there’s an extra added challenge of keeping it safe. Now, many young startups are looking to offer solutions to this problem of customers with an extra layer of finance facility. One such company is Indiagold –which provides a safe locker facility along with an option to secure the loan against your gold stashed in the house. And now, in a fresh round of funding, the company on Friday raised $12 million, reported techcrunch.com.
The round of funding was led by Prosus’ PayU and Falcon’s Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) along with participation from 3one4 Capital, Rainmatter Capital, Better Tomorrow Ventures, and existing investor Leo Capital. The start up’s all-time funding now stands at $14 million.
Indiagold, founded by two former Paytm executives Nitin Misra and Deepak Abbot, is a gold-focused digital alternative credit platform that’s using gold to determine customer creditworthiness and provide APIs to banks and other lenders if they want to enter this space. The start-up, which currently is operational in the National Capital Region and Indore, has two major offerings –providing low-cost safe locker facilities and enabling the option of gold loan to the customer.
So, when the customer signs up for Indiagold, a team of the company visits their house to inspect and weigh the gold after which it is put in an RFID sticker attached to a tamper-proof bag. This bag is further placed in a steel box and is locked by the customer using their fingerprint. A live feed of the journey of their gold is provided to the customer through the Indiagold app.
The company aims to simplify the process of keeping gold in the locker. The customer can access the current value of their gold through the app and get a loan within 30 seconds. Indiagold plans to expand its business further in 10 Indian cities and this fresh round of funding is surely going to help.
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