Aeldra, a global neobank launched in 2021 to provide Indians access to U.S. banking and investment, has announced it has picked up its second round of investment from the early Twitter Silicon Valley investor Greg Kidd.
Kidd was among the first investors in Aeldra when it was launched. Today, close to 50,000 Indians are using Aeldra for their US banking needs with more than $30 million in transactions.
Aeldra enables Indians who do not have a Social Security Number or a visa to open a US bank account digitally on their mobile in ten minutes from India, with only an Indian passport as document proof. All customers have access to a Mastercard global debit card, according to a press statement.
Kidd, who is the foremost early-stage Silicon Valley investor in fintech, has also been an early investor in fintechs like Twitter, Square, Robinhood, Ripple and Coinbase and is known to spot trends across countries, regulations and technology, .
“I have been looking at global trends in finance for two decades and Aeldra uniquely provides cross-border banking to one of the largest markets. This is extremely complex. Sukeert and Aeldra’s leadership team has the credibility, vision and ability to do this,” he said.
Interestingly, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, worked for Kidd before starting Twitter.
“Indians are a global powerhouse. Our customers in India are global in their overall outlook, but they still cannot get a US bank account. We are the only fin-tech platform to offer US bank accounts to Indians in India. We have the support of regulators, top investors and high profile Indian CEOs in the US,” said Sukeert Shanker, Aeldra’s CEO, who also led the launch of Marcus by Goldman Sachs.
Aeldra is compliant with the requisite regulations and has cutting edge security features like the Mastercard Zero Liability Protection or the ability to lock & unlock the debit card through the App. The AeldraPay feature is unique among challenger banks globally and is integrated with Google Pay, it added.
