In a significant show of investor confidence in India’s booming fintech landscape, Bengaluru-based startup Kiwi has successfully raised $24 million in a new funding round. Led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, the capital infusion also saw participation from existing backers Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network, and Stellaris Venture Partners. The funding is earmarked to accelerate Kiwi’s product development and expansion, with a primary focus on its pioneering “Credit on UPI” platform.
Kiwi is at the forefront of a major shift in India’s digital payments ecosystem. The company’s core business model is to enable access to a credit line directly through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India’s most widely used retail payment mode. By partnering with banks, Kiwi issues RuPay credit cards that allow users to access pre-approved credit limits for everyday transactions, marrying the widespread penetration of UPI with the growing demand for credit products. Since its launch in 2023, the company has already issued over 200,000 credit cards and processes over 5 million merchant transactions monthly.
The $24 million in new capital will be used to scale this business, reinforce its unit economics, and, most importantly, launch credit lines on UPI. This feature will allow users to seamlessly access short-term credit directly through their UPI-enabled savings accounts, a product that is expected to reshape consumer behavior in India.
The investment underscores the robust and growing fintech market in India and Southeast Asia, where a large, tech-savvy population and a vast number of unbanked and underbanked citizens are driving demand for digital financial services. Investors like Vertex Ventures, known for backing major startups like Grab and FirstCry, are increasingly betting on companies that can innovate on top of India’s robust digital public infrastructure to solve for financial inclusion and convenience.
