Zolve, a cross border fintech that enables fair access to global financial products, has raised $40 million in a Series A financing round led by partners of DST Global. The round, which values the firm at $210 million and brings its total raise to date to $55 million, also saw participation from Tiger Global and Alkeon Capital, as well as from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Accel.
Based in Delaware and Bengaluru, and founded by former TaxiForSure Co-founder Raghunandan G, Zolve specialises as a neo-banking platform for international migrants moving to the United States. On the basis of their home country credit score, Zolve provides immigrants —working professionals and students bound for the United States — access to FDIC-insured bank accounts, high-limit credit cards, and debit cards, without the need for a social security number or US credit history. With its platform, thousands are being saved the large amounts of money they would have otherwise paid to access a range of other financial services in the United States.
Zolve said it currently serves around 70,000 customers from Australia, Canada, Germany, India, and the United Kingdom, among others. “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. This incredible traction has been far beyond what we had envisioned and clearly demonstrates that there is a tangible need for a service that provides global citizens equitable access to financial products,” Raghunandan said.
The startup recently launched full-scale services in September and said that it has since been receiving inbound requests for funding from many investors, adding that the latest funding round was oversubscribed. “We chose our investors very carefully as we want to learn from their experiences. DST and Tiger, for example, are on the cap table of some of the largest neo-banks and fintech startups in the world such as Chime, Robinhood, Revolut among others,” Raghunandan stated.
Commenting on the funding, Anand Daniel, a partner at Accel, said: “Zolve is among the few startups I’ve seen that achieved product-market fit right out of the gate. Given that the US is a country with immigrants in its DNA, it’s surprising how long it has taken someone to solve the issues that new immigrants experience with the traditional banking system.”
For Bejul Somaia, a partner at Lightspeed, Zolve is delivering a very important service that has a direct and meaningful impact on people’s lives. He expressed excitement over his company’s investment in Zolve, which he said was in support of Zolve’s vision of bringing world-class financial services products and experiences to immigrants in the US and other markets. He added that Zolve’s “rapid acceleration, especially around customer acquisition and usage, was a reflection of its execution capability and significant unmet needs of Zolve’s target customer base.”
Zolve’s financing comes just weeks after CredAvenue raised $90 million in India’s largest-ever Series A round. The startup said it will use the funding to scale up its platform, adding that it was on course to become a full-stack financial services provider with products focused on instant remittance, insurance, and loans in the pipeline.
