Tiger Global joins neobank’s $40m series A round

Zolve, a neobanking startup based in India and the US, has raised 3 billion rupees (US$40 million) in a series A funding round led by Partners of DST Global.

Tiger Global, Alkeon Capital, Accel, and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in the round.

Raghunandan G, CEO and founder of Zolve/ Photo credit: Zolve

This round raises the 10-month-old Zolve’s valuation to over US$210 million, the company said in a statement. The new capital will be used to scale the company’s financial services platform.

Zolve provides US-bound immigrants – working professionals and students – with access to bank accounts, credit cards, and debit cards based on their credit scores in their home countries. The company helps them with these financial services without the need for social security numbers or US credit history.

The company is on track to become a full-stack financial services provider with products focused on instant remittance, insurance, and loans in the pipeline.

Since launching in September 2021, Zolve has signed up more than 70,000 customers from Australia, Canada, Germany, India, and the UK, among others, the company said.

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“While we intended to start with a small cohort of 500 users, we were oversubscribed by almost 90x from working professionals and students within the first few weeks,” said Raghunandan G, CEO and founder of Zolve. He had earlier co-founded taxi aggregator TaxiForSure, which was later acquired by Ola for US$200 million.

Currency converted from Indian rupees to US dollar: US$1 = 74.9 rupees.