“In addition to some existing investors, other new investors may also participate in the round,” one of the people cited above said. “The deal is expected to close in the coming weeks as the company has already received some term sheets,” the person added.
The second person added that the company plans to use the funds to expand its operations in technology, investments and sales. While Centricity declined to comment, Lightspeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This represents a significant increase from the previous valuation of $20 million, when the company raised about $4 million in its seed funding round led by Burman Family Holdings and other angel investors including Shantanu Agarwal (LNJ Bhilwara Group) and Arun Jain (Intellect Design Arena/Founder – Polaris Software Labs).
Techcrunch In July, it was first reported that the startup was in advanced talks to raise more than $20 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed.
Centricity’s other existing investors include Devesh Sachdev (Fusion Microfinance), Rajesh Razdan (Devtron Labs), Ankush Nijhawan (TBO.com), Purrshottam Bhaggeria (Filatex Group), Abhay Agarwal (Burman Family Office) and Pravin Jain/Navin Jain (Supercircle Family Office).
Founded in 2022 by Manu Awasthy, Aditya Shankar, Gaurav Kumar Tiwari, Manish Sharma and Pushpendra Singh, Centricity provides a low-cost and technology-enabled platform to help investment professionals better manage their client portfolios. The founding team brings decades of wealth management experience and aims to solve the challenges faced by wealth managers, their clients and asset managers.
In the 2023 financial year, the company recorded total sales of ₹13.5 crore and a net loss of ₹1.3 crore, as per data from Tracxn. Financial results for FY24 are yet to be filed.
Over the years, this space has attracted the interest of several large private equity players. Some examples include Blackstone’s majority stake in asset management firm ASK Investment Managers Ltd (ASK) in 2022, Bain Capital’s 25 percent stake in 360 ONE (formerly known as IIFL Wealth) in the same year, and US private equity firm TA Associates’ investment in Ahmedabad-based Prudent Corporate Advisory Services in 2018.
The heated activity in the space has now spread to smaller companies as well. Last month, wealth tech platform Stable Money, led by former Navi Mutual Fund chief Saurabh Jain, raised $15 million in a funding round led by RTP Global and Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India).
Dezerv raises capital
In the same month, wealth management platform Dezerv also secured $32 million in a funding round led by Premji Invest. Other existing investors such as Z47, Accel and Elevation Capital also participated in the round.
“Over 65% of HNI (high net worth individual) portfolios often suffer from underperformance due to mis-selling and over-diversification,” said Dezerv’s co-founder Sandeep Jethwani at the time of the funding. The company added that the segment remains underserved by traditional asset managers and retail banks, with nearly two-thirds of the over 250,000 mutual fund portfolios managed through ₹60,000 crore struggled to beat the benchmarks, resulting in lost profits of over ₹2,500 crores.
India is currently witnessing a surge in wealth creation, with many aspiring high net worth investors seeking personalized advice on financial products and services, coupled with increased household savings and incentive-based financial inclusion programs. Several new generation wealth tech companies have found tremendous potential for disruption here.
Other market observers have also pointed out that there are huge opportunities for traditional and modern digital companies to make profits in this space. Redseer’s partner Mrigank Gutgutia, who closely follows the entire fintech sector, expects opportunities for wealth and asset management players to more than double by the end of this decade, driven by the rapid financialization of Indian assets since the pandemic. “This is just the beginning,” he said.
Gutgutia further explained that household savings, which were initially invested in assets such as real estate and gold, are increasingly being invested in other instruments such as mutual funds and direct investments in the stock market, highlighting the huge opportunity for asset managers. More than 50% of new mutual fund accounts were opened digitally last year, recording an average year-on-year growth of 13-15%.
He added that millennials are also aging and are interested in investing in the stock markets directly without the involvement of brokers. They are the next growth levers in the ecosystem and are expected to play a significant role in wealth creation in the next decade.
Moreover, HNIs, ultra-HNIs and emerging affluent households are also witnessing a higher growth pace of their holdings in the last two years. As the addressable market grows with higher disposable incomes, funding of such startups, even at an early stage, will continue as investors look to capitalize on the huge opportunity, Gutgutia said.
