Mumbai: Bueno Finance has raised $3 million in a seed funding round that saw the participation of a slew of investors, including Goat Capital, JAM Fund, Olive Tree Capital, and Goodwater Capital. Angel investors such as Kunal Shah of Cred and Anupam Mittal of Shaadi.com also pitched in.
Launched in October 2019 by Saurav Gandhi and Sandeep Arora, Bueno Finance was part of the Winter 2021 batch of US-based startup accelerator Y-Combinator. It focuses on the distribution of credit for India’s middle- and lower middle-income segment.
“Only 10% of the formal credit (mostly secured) goes to 45% households of India earning approximately $200-$400 a month. Bueno Finance wants to democratise credit along with other financial services to this massive segment,” Gandhi, who is also the chief executive officer of the firm, said.
Bueno Finance is also building itself as a ‘neobank’, tying up with licensed banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) for backend solutions, to provide customers access to credit and also better plan their financial health.
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“We are excited to be a small and early part of the Bueno Finance journey,” said Justin Kan, general partner at Goat Capital. “As children of middle-class families, the vision of financial inclusion and building credit for a better future resonated with us deeply.”