Fintech Startup 'Slice' is India’s 41st Unicorn with $220 mn funding

Fintech firm Slice has got $220 million from a clutch of investors led by Tiger Global and Insight Partners at a valuation of over $1 billion, becoming the latest Indian start-up to become a unicorn. The series B financing was also backed by new and existing investors, including Advent International’s Sunley House Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Anfa, Gunosy, Blume Ventures and 8i.

Slice is the 41st start-up to become a unicorn this year, underscoring investors’ sustained appetite to back tech firms amid growing consumer demand for digital services. The Bengaluru-based firm has raised about $258.8 million equity so far, according to data from Crunchbase. In June, it had got $20 million from investors led by Blume Ventures and Gunosy.

Slice plans to use the fresh capital to bolster presence in the payments space, hire skilled talent and expand product offerings, it said in a release on Monday. Slice, which has positioned itself as a credit card challenger, enables young Indians to pay bills through its super card, a prepaid Visa card with a credit line. The company claims that users can avail up to 2% cashback on each transaction. It says it ships over 2,00,000 cards each month. “Even as most individuals in India have bank accounts and debit cards, only a sliver of this banking population has access to credit cards, which is less than 35 million according to industry estimates. Moreover, the nation’s young credit-rating system covers only a tiny fraction of this population, making it tediously challenging for them to own a credit card,” the firm said. Slice has about five million registered users with average age of 27.

Indian start-ups have raised over $6 billion in Q3CY21, according to a recent report by NASSCOM and PGA Labs. Fintech start-ups got almost 16% of this. “Fintech continues to develop its legacy and penetrate into the start-up ecosystem. Growing infrastructure stack, innovative solutions and new business models will continue to keep this sector in limelight,” said the report.