Nitin Gupta's Uni Bags $18.5 Mn Seed Capital to Tap Into India's Credit Card Market The seed funding round, one of the largest seed rounds in the Indian tech space, was led by Lightspeed Ventures India and Accel Partners India

Fintech startup Uni has raised USD18.5 million in what is being called as one of the largest seed funding rounds from Lightspeed Ventures India and Accel Partners India.

The company is co-founded by Nitin Gupta, who has previously founded PayUMoney and worked with Ola Financial Services as a senior executive along with Prateek Jindal, known for playing a key role in building Olamoney postpaid and Laxmikant Vyas, who has previously head risks for EMI cards business and data science departments at Bajaj Finance.

As the company is still in stealth mode, its business model has not yet been revealed. However, the compoany's statement suggested that Uni plans to expand the country's credit card market as it aims to bridge the gap for credit cards and make them become more accessible for consumers across different regions.

"Over the last five years, we have witnessed a three-time acceleration of digital and electronic payment platforms, however, the share of credit card payments has fallen drastically. There is an opportunity to expand the market from 58 million credit cards in India today to 200 million credit cards over the next five years by building new products, catering to underserved customer needs and getting new customer segments," said founder and chief executive officer Gupta.

The company, in its official statement, pointed that the credit cards market in India is still under-penetrated as compared to digital payments, with just 34 million credit card users having 58 million credit cards whereas there are more than 100 million Indians today who pay digitally and electronically. Uni is focused on filling this gap with an "aim to target the e-commerce and internet-savvy generation in India who are looking at leading aspirational lifestyles."

"Credit card is a very large and exciting market. It has over USD 100 billion in annual spends and still less than 2.5 per cent of the Indian population has a credit card today. The opportunity in front of us is truly immense," said Prayank Swaroop, partner, Accel Partners India.

Apart from Gupta, Kunal Shah of Cred (previously founded freecharge), Ashish Kashyap of INDmoney (former goibibo founder) and Jitendra Gupta of Jupiter (founder, Citruspay) are the other second or third generation technology entrepreneurs to have raised large seed capital of USD 30 million each and 24 million, respectively. Notably, all these three founders are building their new ventures in the financial services industry.

"Nitin and Uni's team are passionate about unlocking the power of financial services for millions of Indian consumers using new tech-powered solutions. We are excited about their mission and proud to support them from day one," said Bejul Somaia, Partner, Lightspeed India Partners.