NEW DELHI ,oct 29:
Ashish Kashyap, founder of travel company Ibibo Group, which was acquired by larger peer, Nasdaq-listed MakeMyTrip for an estimated $2 billion two years ago, has launched his second entrepreneurial venture, 13 months after quitting the domestic travel behemoth.
IndWealth, an artificial intelligence and machine learning-based wealth management and advisory platform, will offer a slew of services to high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals. The platform has raised an estimated $30 million in seed funding from UK and Hong Kong-based hedge fund Steadview Capital, which is possibly the largest funding round raised by a homegrown startup that is still in stealth mode.
“The key learning is, managing money cannot be done through a single dimension,” Kashyap told ET. “It can’t just be done through investments. It has to be done through a combination of investment, liabilities and taxation. We want to play a very important part of the consumer’s financial life.”
IndWealth, which is being described as a wealth tech company, will offer customers investment planning, tax analytics and tax savings strategies, help manage their future cash flows and liabilities, built on proprietary technology, and underpinned by artificial intelligence and machine learning.
According to Kashyap, the platform, which is expected to launch in the Google Play Store and iOS App Store in January next year, will initially target HNIs with annual incomes starting from Rs 18-20 lakh, before rolling out to a wider demographic. The company has also onboarded, what it terms, dedicated financial counsellors that will advise and work with its users.
“Everyone is developing products and solutions of various sub-categories, but they all intersect. We wanted to bring all of this under one roof, which is classic wealth management practice. This will enable consumers to plan their goals for the future,” he said.
The parent company of IndWealth is Finzoom Investments, which is registered in Gurgaon.
Kashyap quit as president of Make-MyTrip in September last year, a year after he, along with MakeMyTrip group chief executive Deep Kalra, had orchestrated, at the time, the largest internet merger in India-the $2 billion largely stock acquisition of Ibibo Group by the Nasdaq-listed OTA. But the DPS Mathura Road alum, who also holds an economics degree from Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College and Masters degrees from INSEAD and McGill University, has been one of the most active entrepreneurs in the Indian startup ecosystem.
He spent three years at Times Internet, the digital arm of Bennett Coleman and Co, the publisher of The Economic Times, before moving to Google in 2005, as the tech giant’s first country manager.
Post his stint at Google, he set up Ibibo Group, which was initially created as a greenfield incubator, in partnership with Naspers, before evolving into an online travel business. For Steadview Capital, the investment in IndWealth marks the first bet it has made in a day zero startup in India, having earlier backed some of the country’s largest startup ventures, a list that includes Flipkart, India’s largest online commerce company, ride-hailing major Ola and online insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar.
