Jai Kisan raises $50mn to fuel rise of rural India, giving rural customer first-ever fully digital POS financing experience

Mumbai

Rural fintech start-up Jai Kisan has raised $50mn (Rs 390 crore) in a combination of equity and debt in the first close of its ongoing Series B round, onboarding marquee international financial services and strategic investors. New investors GMO Venture Partners, Yara Growth Ventures and DG Daiwa Ventures, existing investors Blume, Arkam Ventures, Mirae Asset, Snow Leopard Ventures, and others, invested as part of the Series B round of funding. Northern Arc, Alteria and MAS Financial contributed to the debt raise.

Jai Kisan aims to use the proceeds of the fundraising to expand its product suite and enhance the customer journey. The funding will also help accelerate the phenomenal growth of existing products, strengthen talent, and boost data science and engineering capabilities.

Jai Kisan was founded by Arjun Ahluwalia and Adriel Maniego with the aim of creating the first full-stack and seamless financial services experience for rural individuals and businesses. With the first-ever technology-led financial platform designed for ‘Bharat’, Jai Kisan is revolutionizing the financial experience for rural Indians. Capturing the transaction footprint of rural businesses and individuals, Jai Kisan helped deploy low-cost credit with a state-of-the-art customer journey, facilitating over $220mn on an annualized basis and recording an unprecedented 4x growth within 12 months.

"We were immediately struck by the opportunity that Jai Kisan has to help enable better financing to rural Indians,” said George Roche of Yara Growth Ventures. “Better credit access can help micro, small, and medium enterprises grow their businesses while helping growers afford products to improve their yield and quality,” added Erkki Aaltonen, Managing Director of Yara Growth Ventures.

Jai Kisan's app, Bharat Khata, helps rural value chains digitize transactions, capturing never-before-seen insight into financial services’ needs, customer behaviour and transaction footprint of rural businesses and individuals. Jai Kisan has successfully implemented the first-ever fully digital, low-cost farmer financing at point-of-sale, with a seamless checkout experience ensuring a complete loan journey within 10 minutes.

Extended across the Bharat Khata network of retail storefronts, Jai Kisan’s POS Financing Solution (BNPL) has seen immense traction, gaining 400 per cent growth in customers in three months. Keeping customer awareness and financial literacy at the forefront, the app is available in nine languages.

“We are proud to have come thus far in this journey of revolutionizing financial services for rural India. It is due to the strong support of our network of customers and partners, and our extremely resilient team that we have been able to launch and scale such ground-breaking solutions. We are grateful for the faith that our investors, lenders and other stakeholders have shown, and continue to show in our vision,” said Arjun Ahluwalia, Co-founder and CEO, Jai Kisan.

Jai Kisan's roadmap includes digitizing the savings, insurance, and payment experience for its users, making it the only consumer-experience-obsessed rural financial services brand.

Veda Corporate Advisors and Investec India acted as financial advisors to Jai Kisan for the fundraising.