WeRize announced that it has raised $8 million in Series A funding round, led by 3one4 Capital, Picus Capital, Kalaari Capital, and Orios Ventures.
Founded by ex LendingKart executives Vishal Chopra and Himanshu Gupta in 2019, WeRize is creating a new category-socially distributed full stack financial services platform for families in small town India.
The financial needs of small town India have been largely ignored by incumbent players and fintechs who primarily focus on millennials in urban India. WeRize is already operationally profitable and is on target to become EBITDA positive by early 2022. It has registered 10x revenue growth in the last year, it said in a press release.
The company currently caters to customers in 1000+ cities and towns and plans to reach 4000+ towns in the next 2 years through its social distribution “Social Shopify of Finance” tech platform that will have over 50,000 freelance financial consultants across India.
WeRize is a full stack provider, both- developing and distributing a wide portfolio of customised credit, group insurance and savings products for 100 million families and 300 million individuals who live in 4000+ small towns of India.
Social distribution has so far allowed WeRize to collect over 1 billion data points across 500k families in 1000 cities. WeRize has used insights from these data points to create customised credit, group insurance, and savings products that serve the unique needs of these families. The social distribution model has also resulted in significantly lower customer acquisition cost (no branches or employees in these small cities) and helped WeRize build a sustainable business serving small town India.
Vishal Chopra & Himanshu Gupta, Co-Founders, WeRize said: “We are creating a new category in the Indian financial services space; a socially distributed full stack financial services platform for 4000+ small towns of India. The full stack approach of owning both the product and the distribution gives us unique insights about our customer segment that becomes an unbeatable competitive advantage. With the support of our investors, we have the opportunity to reimagine financial services for a large and profitable customer base that has been inadequately served by the existing ecosystem. And we will do this while generating livelihood for thousands of partners through our pioneering distribution model”.
Anurag Ramdasan, Partner at 3one4 Capital said: “Financial services for 4000+ small towns in India is a space that has been largely untouched due to the complex nature of the space.”
Rajesh Raju, Managing Partner at Kalaari Capital said: “Vishal and Himanshu bring to the table all the necessary know-how and experience to build India’s first socially distributed full stack financial services brand for families in small town India."
