Indians are crazy for gold. As per the latest report, South Asian Market users have over 25,000 tons of precious metal, which is equivalent to almost half of the country’s GDP. To provide a credit on this Gold that is idly seating in the lockers for ages, Indiagold is providing online Gold based credit platform. The startup has raised $12 million to strengthen the above operation.
Indiagold Closes New Funding Round
Indians are known for converting at least a part of their savings into gold for emergency use or the future. Gold demand is very high in India. As per a financial report, Indians stockpile more gold than citizens in any other country. The country is also one of the world’s largest importers of gold in south Asian countries.
Gold can be utilized in two ways. First, it is one of the savings instruments, which protects from the ups and downs of the financial market. Second, Gold owners can get credit or loans based on their gold reserve. Selling gold jewelry is the last option in Indian households when they are in dire need of money. But, people don’t utilize their gold properly.
Here comes the savior Indiagold, a young startup. The firm is initiating a gold-based digital credit platform. To provide this operation to the majority of users, the company has closed a Series A funding round of $12 million.
The new financing event was led by Prosus’ PayU and Falcon’s Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) fund. Better Tomorrow Ventures, 3one4 Capital, Rainmatter Capital, and Leo Capital are the other investors who actively participated in the fresh round.
About Indiagold and its Operations
Nitin Misra and Deepak Abbot co-founded India gold in 2020. They both earlier worked in Paytm. The startup has a clear goal of providing an online platform for Indians so that they can secure and take advantage of their gold.
The firm has two major operations. First, it helps the households to keep their gold in safe lockers easily. The firm also provides the best affordable plans to avail of the gold lockers. Second, the startup is providing loans against the gold reserves in lockers. The firm is strengthening second operations further by current funding.
Talking about young startup’s operations further, co-founders told to Techcrunch in an interview, “This whole business is built around trust. Unless a norm in some circles of the startup ecosystem where you are expected to break things and move fast, we have to spend as much time with customers to build that trust.”
Once customers have kept their gold in Indiagold lockers. They can anytime check the value of their gold reserves online via the Indiagold app. And if they want to take a loan, the startup provides the loan facility within 30 seconds.
As per analysts at Bernstein’s report of early 2021, Despite the large gold reserves held by Indian households, the gold loan market has barely scratched the surface. The gold collateral (166 tons) held by Muthoot Finance is less than 1% of the estimated gold reserves in Indian households (~25k tons). This is because gold is seen as a family heirloom and passed along generations.
