Mumbai, Mar 3: India-focused, California-based fintech player Aeldra Financial, which at the beta level has opened over 10,000 US savings bank accounts for Indians over the past three months, is looking at raising USD 25 million from existing and new investors as it is entering more geographies, a top company official has said.
Aeldra offers private banking services with primary focus on opening savings bank accounts with a US bank for Indians through its mobile app. Deposits in such accounts are guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation of the US.
Aeldra launched its mobile app based services at beta level last December here and has since then opened over 10,000 accounts with the US-based Blue Ridge Bank along with a Mastercard debit card.
Aeldra does not charge anything from customers for transferring money under the liberalised remittances scheme (LRS), which normally costs USD 20-25 per transaction. Instead it gets the account-holder 2 per cent interest on the deposit, Sukeert Shanker, one of the four co-founders and chief executive of Aeldra Financial Inc, told PTI from his Palo Alto headquarters.
“We’ve already opened 10,000 such accounts at the beta stage by February 28 and from March 1 we are live. We hope to open 15,000-20,000 more accounts by the end of the month in India and around 5 lakh by the end of this year including the US. But vast majority of our business, say 2-3 lahk accounts, will come from India only,” Shanker, a past chief operating officer of Marcus, the retail banking venture of Goldman Sachs, said.
Aeldra has already raised USD 3 million in C-round from a clutch of investors like Greg Kidd, the co-founder Twitter, Lorentzen Investments, MFV Partners, New Vernon and a few others.
Other investors include venture capitalists like Ankit Kesarvani, Kazi Zaman, Karthee Madasammy, Silicon Valley stalwart Tom Brown, Kausik Rajgopal of McKinsey North America, Ashish Jain of PWC among others, he said.
“Now as we look to expand our services to Brazilian citizens (our services are open only to Indian passport-holders elsewhere like Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong), and also to Russia and China later, we are in talks with our existing investors and also new venture capital funds to raise around USD 25 million in A-series and hope to close it by June,” Shanker said.
He said there is a vast market out there as the US issues six lakh B1 visas to Indians annually but these visa-holders pay a high price transferring money to the US, to the tune of USD 20-25 per transaction.
The large Indian diaspora in the US, including the population of dependent parents, students and their parents, and freelancers and small businessmen are the main customers for Aeldra.
There is also demand for investing in US stocks and other assets and to tap this they will be launching an investment platform soon.
Shanker said average deposit in these accounts is USD 4,000-5,000 now, and most accounts are opened for students by their parents.
While the service is free for customers, Aledra gets a large portion of inter-change fee from Mastercard, and an interest arbitrage from Blue Ridge Bank which pays 3.5 per cent interest to the depositors but Aeldra keeps 1.5 per cent of that paying them 2 per cent interest in a market that offers near zero interest for savings deposits. (PTI)
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