Millions of students and professionals leave their home country for work each year and pursue higher education. Even after spending months in the new country, they struggle to get a credit card from local banks and have to pay a premium to access a range of other financial services.
Banks in the United States, or most other countries, rely on the local credit score to determine the suitability of potential candidates. Even if an individual had a very good credit score in India, for example, that wouldn't matter to banks in other countries.
This was the takeaway food Raghunandan G, the founder of TaxiForSure firm (sold to local giant Ola), who returned to India after a trip. After doing further research and assembling a team, Raghunandan believes he has a solution.
Wednesday announced Zolve, a neobanking platform that targets global citizens. The startup works with banks in the United States, India and other countries to provide consumers with hassle-free access to financial products without paying any premiums.
In an interview with ProWellTech, Raghunandan said the startup is taking the risk, which has allowed foreign banks to extend their services to Zolve customers. "Consumers can open an account with us and access all banking services as if they were banking with their national bank," he said.
As part of the announcement, Raghunandan said Zolve raised $ 15 million in a Seed funding round led by Accel and Lightspeed. Blume Ventures and several high profile angel investors including Kunal Shah (founder of Cred), Ashish Gupta (former CEO of Helion), Greg Kidd (known for his investments in Twitter and Ripple), Rahul Mehta (Managing Partner at DST Global), Rahul Kishore (Senior Managing Director of Coatue Capital, also participated in the round. So did Founder Collective (which supported Airtable and Uber), in what is his first investment in an Indian startup.
"Individuals with financial identities across multiple geographies need seamless global financial solutions, and we believe the team's strong identification with the issue will enable them to deliver compelling and innovative financial experiences," said Bejul Somaia, Lightspeed India Partners, in a statement.
The startup plans to offer a range of services including a credit card and insurance to its customers by the end of the year. It has already amassed over 5,000 customers, Raghunandan said.
Zolve offers a range of interesting features even for those who are not planning to visit a foreign land. If you're in India, for example, you can use Zolve to buy shares of companies listed on US stock exchanges. You can also buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from exchanges based in the United States or Europe, Raghunandan said.
"It is an absurd reality that global citizens have to rebuild their financial profile when they move to a new country. Zolve solves this problem by helping them gain equal access to a suite of modern financial tools so that they can participate in the new economy on an equal footing from day one, "said David Frankel, Managing Partner of Founder Collective.
"The global citizen community is vastly underserved in terms of access to financial services and we believe there is a huge market opportunity for Zolve. Raghu has a proven track record as a founder and we are delighted to partner with him again on his latest venture. The team's passion and commitment are commendable and we are confident that Zolve will create tremendous value for this community, "said Accel partner Anand Daniel in a statement.
This is an evolving story. More to follow ...