Bengaluru-based digital banking start-up NiYO Solutions has raised $35 million in Series B funding round from Horizons Ventures, Tencent and existing investor, JS Capital.

Founded by banking veteran Vinay Bagri and technology veteran Virender Bisht in 2015 and launched as a pilot in July 2016, NiYO had earlier raised $14 million in funding rounds led by Prime Venture Partners. Including this current round, NiYO had raised $49 million.

The funding would be used to accelerate the development and roll out of new product offerings, to expand distribution, to create brand awareness in marketing and to explore global markets, particularly emerging economies which offer similar opportunities for digital disruption.

NiYO serves around 1 million users who work in over 5,000 corporates and aims to serve 5 million users in the next three years. The start-up will be hiring 1,000 direct sales staff who are graduates with some experience in banking at Rs 4 lakh to Rs 8 lakh per annum in the next 12 months, a top executive told BusinessLine.

“Our core focus on customer value and customer service is paying rich dividends with strong growth across business metrics in the last 12 months. We have grown 10 times since our last fund raise in January 2018 when we served 500 corporate clients where our services were used by over 1 lakh salaried employees. With this fresh round of funding we aim to fortify our service suite and further accelerate our growth” said co-founder and CEO of NiYO, Vinay Bagri.

The start-up serves the blue collared salaried employees through its NiYO Bharat Payroll Solution, where it provides digital banking services for managing their savings, payments, investments and financial protection (insurance). One example of innovation is the NiYO Bharat Mobile App, which is available in eight languages is probably the only banking app that is speech enabled.

NiYO is also betting big on the international travel market with its forex solution, NiYO Global Card. With over 26 million Indians travelling abroad in 2018, the start-up aims to corner a large share of this market through rapid product innovation and unparalleled customer experience.

“We were excited by the NiYO’s vision of bringing ‘neo-banking’ experience to the blue collar segment - helping drive the benefits of digitisation, and financial inclusion to the hard-working masses in India” said Sanjay Swamy, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners.

NiYO operates out of corporate offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, has sales presence in more than 20 states and union territories and employs 800 people.

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