Bengaluru-based fintech startup Jodo has raised $15 million in a Tiger Global-led Series A round, which includes participation from existing investors Elevation Capital and Matrix Partners India. The fund raiser was conducted with a post-money valuation of $90 million. Percentage stake in parent company Bharosepe Technology Services, while Matrix Partners and Elevation Capital together will own more than 13 percent. In a previous round in 2020, the startup had raised $3.8 million from Matrix Partners and Elevation Capital. Meanwhile, Tiger Global has been on track for success with its early-stage and Series A investments in India in 2022. The global investment firm has already raised nearly US $400 million in India through 12 such deals in staged funding. The fresh capital will be used for product development, team building, and product promotion.
Founded in 2020 by Atulya Bhat, Raghav Nagarajan, and Koustav Dey, Jodo is a fintech product that develops solutions that enable parents to plan and pay their children’s education fees. “In middle-class Indian families, almost 15 to 20 percent of their annual income goes towards their children’s education. We help them with solutions to plan and allocate these expenses according to their needs. We work with educational institutions and financial services companies to make this possible,” Bhat said in an interview. Jodo reaches out to schools and educational institutions to help them manage their income and. at the same time tries to simplify payments for parents. The startup has tested and developed some new features around automated recurring school fee payments and smoother instant payments of large tickets, ideal for education fees on the B2C side. Bhat said: “In the next 18 to 24 months we are focusing on our current product itself, we are working with around 100 institutions, in the next 18 months we aim to reach around 5,000 institutions where our products are used in charging to streamline.
We have a portfolio of products that we plan to introduce in this regard, to improve the efficiency of fare collection, to make fare payment convenient for parents and for students to digitize the whole process.” “Of course, the other thing is to build a team that handles both the expansion of the institute and the expansion of the product line. We will continue to pay and hire amazing talent to enable us to do this. We currently have about 150 members,” he added. Jodo plans to more than double the size of the team to 300-350 over the next 18 months. Alex Cook, Partner at Tiger Global said: “Jodo is modernizing payments and credit for the Indian education market, increasing convenience and affordability for parents and providing better workflow for schools and institutions. We are very impressed with Jodo’s progress and look forward to partnering with them as they expand the product offering and become available in more schools.
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