Setu, a fintech API infrastructure company based in Bangalore, has raised USD 15 million (INR 110 Crore) in a Series A financing round led by Falcon Edge and Lightspeed Venture Partners US along with existing investors Lightspeed India Partners, and Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund. This funding will be used to continue strengthening its team, roll out a suite of new products, and improve its robust technology infrastructure.
About Setu#
Setu—meaning bridge in Sanskrit—is a fintech API infrastructure provider that connects regulated financial institutions to other companies that wish to offer financial services to their customers. The company estimates that over a billion people in India need access to formal sachet-ized financial products and services. Poor product design, high distribution costs, and legacy technology have been barriers to make this happen.
Setu is co-founded by Sahil Kini, former Principal at Aspada Investments, and Nikhil Kumar, former fellow at iSPIRT Foundation where he worked on building a vibrant developer ecosystem for UPI and GSTN, and ex-Exotel, Intuit and Tally.
Setu’s offerings#
Setu offers open APIs across four categories — bills, savings, credit, and payments. Any developer can access its sandbox to build an application and go through a rigorous developer certification program to go live. This makes it easy for any company to acquire plug-and-play financial services and become a FinTech.
The Company recently launched “Collect”, an API bundle designed for developers to build their own custom collections product. For eg: Lending collection companies are using Setu to build an omni-channel collections stack for banks and NBFCs. This API platform is built on top of public infrastructure such as UPI and BBPS by partnering with some of India’s leading banks — Kotak, ICICI, & Axis Bank.
Setu is currently working on fundamental building blocks for digital financial services across FASTag, savings, credit, & data.
Founder Quotes#
“We are on a decades-long path to building financial infrastructure that will be used for generations to come. As a founder, I’m most excited about the position we find ourselves in — with a world-class cross-functional team, some of India’s largest and most respected financial institutions as banking partners, and customers who are already tasting success by building on top of our APIs.” — Sahil Kini, Co-Founder & CEO of Setu.
“We want to reimagine financial services for every Indian, rich or poor, by enabling developers to build products that weren’t possible before. Patience, capital, experimentation, and stellar execution are essential to make this magic happen. With this raise, we’re looking for more creators, geeks, and leaders to join our growing tribe of 30 Setuzens.” — Nikhil Kumar, Co-Founder & Chief Evangelist.
Investor Quotes#
“We at Falcon Edge believe strongly in the theme of rising financial penetration and inclusion in India. Setu, led by two outstanding young entrepreneurs, Sahil Kini and Nikhil Kumar, stands at the forefront of this theme. By supplying the critically needed “pipe” infrastructure that allows traditional and non-traditional financial products to reach a new class of Indian consumers, Setu can drive the sachetisation of the traditional financial product while enabling traditional public and private lenders to reach a wider cross-section of India in a digitally enhanced manner. We are extremely excited to partner with the Founders as well as Lightspeed and Bharat Inclusion Fund.” — Navroz Udwadia, Managing Partner, Falcon Edge.
“We are big believers in Setu’s vision to build infrastructure that enables the large-scale distribution of, and access to, financial products. Sahil, Nikhil, and the Setu team have an exciting roadmap for the future of financial services in India and we’re proud to support their journey.” — Bejul Somaia, Managing Partner, Lightspeed India Partners.
“We see a lot of young companies spend an inordinate amount of time trying to partner and integrate with financial institutions. Setu’s banking as a service will now enable a number of new entrepreneurs to build for Bharat like never before.” — Sanjay Jain, Partner, Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund.
https://setu.co/ contact@setu.co
If you’d like to join us on our mission to rebuild India’s FinTech infrastructure, visit us here: https://setu.co/careers
If you’re a lender and want to increase your collection touchpoints, visit us here: https://setu.co/lending/devs
