FPL Technologies raises $4.5M from Matrix Partners India, Sequoia India and reputed angel investors
Mumbai, 5th September, 2019: FPL Technologies announced today that it has raised funding from Matrix Partners India, Sequoia India and a number of reputed angel investors. Founded by Anurag Sinha, Rupesh Kumar and Vibhav Hathi, who come from banking backgrounds with deep expertise in payments, credit and building and scaling digital businesses, FPL Technologies is on a mission to re-imagine credit and payments from first principles.
Today, while more than 300 Million people have borrowed from organized financial services lenders, less than 25 Million people have credit cards. FPL believes that consumption credit linked to overall consumption expenditure in India will grow exponentially in the next decade backed by growth in GDP per capita along with its threshold effect.
FPL will soon be launching its first product, a Mobile Credit Card, in partnership with a bank. The aim is to replace the current manual processes with an intuitive mobile app that gives end users complete control over their card experience.
As a step towards building this product, FPL has launched OneScore, an app that helps people monitor their credit score in a simple, secure way, without any spam. OneScore doesn't require any app permissions or promote loan offers/ads unlike majority of the services available in the market. It's also the only app in India that helps you improve your score through a machine learning-based score planner feature. OneScore has received an overwhelming response from their users and has scaled to more than 100 thousand users in 2 months.
What's interesting is that while more than 60% of OneScore users are below 31 years of age and more than 55% of them have a prime credit score, less than 23% of them own a credit card. This shows that there is a huge market gap waiting to be explored.
Anurag Sinha, Co-founder & CEO added, "We believe existing credit products need to be more digital, flexible, transparent, ubiquitous and fair priced to end-consumers to build scale. From the process of researching for a product, to acquiring it, using it on a day to day basis and finally handling exceptions, we have set out to re-imagine every aspect from first principles using modern technology.'
"We have known Anurag, Rupesh, and Vibhav for several years now', said Shailesh Lakhani, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India LLC. "When they presented a plan to modernize credit cards in India it immediately resonated with the Sequoia India team. It's a delight to partner with them as they work on developing more flexible, affordable and easier to use financial products for Indian consumers.
"In a market as crowded as the financial services space with a plethora of services and products to choose from, First Principles Labs (FPL) breaks through the clutter with a simplified and streamlined approach to rebuild the credit and payments platform with a unique model that leverages tech and over-weighs on data security. We are excited to be partnering with Anurag, Rupesh and Vibhav, and our co-investors Sequoia India along with prominent angel investors, on this journey', commented Rajat Agarwal, Director, Matrix Partners India.
About FPL Technologies:
FPL Technologies is fintech company on a mission to re-imagine credit and payments from first principles. FPL has launched OneScore app to help people monitor their credit score in a simple, secure way without any spam. Download OneScore app fromwww.onescore.app
About Matrix Partners India:
Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with approximately $1 billion under management. Founded in 2006, the firm invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market at the seed, early and early growth stages. Matrix India has invested in several market leading companies such as Ola (local transportation), Quikr (online classifieds), Practo (digital health platform), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Stanza Living (student housing), Treebo (digital hotel chain), Limeroad (social e-commerce platform), Mswipe (mobile POS), Five Star Business Finance (SME lending), OfBusiness (credit led B2B marketplace), Avail Finance (online lending platform), Ola Electric Mobility (multimodal electric vehicle platform), Vogo (scooter sharing) Razorpay (payments), Credit Vidya (consumer lending) and ZipLoan (small business lending) among others. Matrix India has advisory offices in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. Matrix Partners has a global network of funds investing in the US, China and India, with approximately $5 billion under management. Further information is available at www.matrixpartners.in
