Bengaluru-based startup Flint has raised a $5.1 million Seed round led by Sequoia Capital India and GFC. Coinbase Ventures, Hashed, IOSG, Better Capital, Antler India and MSA Capital also participated in the round as part of 11 institutional investors.
Over 60 angel investors across the globe also participated in this funding round. Angel investors include: Kunal Shah (Founder, CRED), Sandeep Nailwal (Co-founder, Polygon), Jaynti Kanani (Co-founder, Polygon), Do Kwon (Founder, Terra), Nitin Gupta (Co-founder, Uni), Amulya Goyal (MD, Large global bank), Kunal Bahl (Co-founder, Snapdeal via Titan Capital), Rohit Bansal (Co-founder, Snapdeal via Titan Capital), Tanmay Bhat, Sanat Rao (GP, Blocktower Capital), Abhishek Nag (Director, Netflix India), Ajit Tripathi (Head of business at Aave), Marc Bhargava (Strategy, Coinbase), Mahdi Raza (Ex-Robinhood).
What will the funds be used for?
The fresh capital will accelerate bringing early users on board, enhance the product based on early feedback, and hire for senior positions across engineering, design and product functions.
Flint also plans to allocate a significant portion of the funding to strengthen legal and risk functions, ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory norms, while also going above and beyond market standards to reduce business risk.
Founded in October 2021, users can earn up to 13 percent p.a. on their deposited funds. Flint doesn’t expose users to volatile crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum, it said in a statement. It only deals with stable cryptocurrencies like USDT, USDC, etc., that are free from crypto price fluctuations. As such, Flint claims to remove all the complexities for its customers via an easy-to-use mobile app and offers simple exposure to crypto. Flint also provides the flexibility of having no ‘lock-in period’ where users can withdraw their funds at any time without any fees. The company is taking a UX first approach for the retail users and building easy on-ramps, it added.
Anshu Agrawal, Co-Founder of Flint, said, “Flint’s mission is to make cryptocurrencies easy and accessible to everyone. We are at the tip of the iceberg and the opportunity that Web3 provides for the world is massive. As a brand, we simply intend to demystify crypto, provide easy-to-use products, and introduce a billion people to our inevitable future, ensuring Web3 becomes a part of our everyday lives."
“Just the way billions of people were on-boarded onto the internet in the last decade, billions of users will be on boarded onto web3.0 in the next few years,” said Aakash Kapoor, VP, Sequoia India.
Flint plans to roll out their ‘up to 13 percent interest’ offering to users on the early access list and aims to quickly scale to a million users from there on. Having started the operations in India, Flint will be opening access to international users very soon and expand the product offerings to bring more investment opportunities for users in the upcoming months.
