Teen-focussed Fintech Startup Pencilton Raises $330,000 In Pre-Seed Round Funds to be utilized for product enhancement and initial growth
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Pencilton, a teen-focused fintech startup, announced on Tuesday to have raised $330,000 in a pre-Seed round led by Jupiter (registered as Amica Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd). The round also saw participation from many successful founders such as Nilesh Patel and Prashant Singh (LeadSquared), Ashish Sharma (Innoven Capital), Abhishek Goyal (Tracxn), Himanshu Sharma (Aspiring Minds), Kunal Sinha (GlowRoad), Vignesh Ramanujam (Spoonfeed) and angel investor Tirumalareddy Karri.
Pencilton offers a first-of-its-kind debit card, PencilCard, to teenagers and students to help them manage their expenses while teaching them the basics of money management. A major upgrade is expected to its debit card in a few weeks that works with the Pencilton app to enable financial inclusion and digital financial literacy for teenagers.
With the new funding, Pencilton aims at product enhancement by building industry-leading backend systems for card issuance, management, and further launching of upgraded products. The startup was founded by VishwajitPureti, Ashish Singh, Pallavi Tipparaju, and Viraj Gadde in 2020.
"This round is predominantly of great strategic importance as it serves as a vehicle for us to have some of the best minds from the fintech, as well as the startup ecosystem, join us on our mission. It gives us access to stellar expertise across fintech, fundraising, GTM, user acquisition and more to help navigate the next steps as we scale up. We are incredibly excited for the journey ahead where we are going to announce many industry-leading initiatives that will help bring the best of fintech tools as well as digital financial literacy to teens and students across India," said Vishwajit Pureti, co-founder and chief executive officer, Pencilton.
Pencilton has recently introduced the PencilCard, a RuPay debit card for teens across India that can be activated and managed via the Pencilton app. The app is built to be the epicenter of not just the finances of teens but also their understanding of money. Teens can use the debit card to manage, receive and spend their pocket money through the help of the Pencilton app. In addition, parents can also use the app to give pocket money, setting parental controls such as the spend limits, approval of money requests, etc.
"Jupiter is very excited to invest in Pencilton. The teen/pre-teen banking segment is nascent and growing rapidly. We believe that the Pencilton team understands the space well and is passionately solving both kids' and parents' needs. At Jupiter, we will continue to invest or partner with teams which are solving problems adjacent to our own and help make our ecosystem stronger," added Rahool Gadkari, director of product, Jupiter.
As part of its larger goal, Pencilton aspires to educate the younger generation on financial literacy and management and become the most innovative and prominent player in this space.
