South Korean startup True Balance announced that it has raised $23 million in a Series C funding round. Seven Korean investors — NH Investment & Securities, IBK Capital, D3 Jubilee Partners, SB Partners and Shinhan Capital, as well as existing partners IMM Investment and HB Investment — participated in the round.
Launched four years ago, the company runs a financial services app for more than 60 million users in small cities and towns in India (called India 2 and India 3), closing more than 300,000 digital transactions on its app each day. True Balance has also begun selling such products as smartphones on its app, generating $100 million in gross merchandise value sales in the country so far.
“We are excited to see that many people in rural India are smart enough to use online payment options to transact and access money,” the company wrote in a blog post earlier this year. “These days, rural market has significant contribution on the economic progress of the country.”
True Balance already raised $38 million in a previous funding round, bringing its total amount raised to $65 million. It had been looking to raise as much as $70 million during this latest round. The company will use this latest funding to bring in additional customers by adding more features to the app before the end of the fiscal year, including access to purchasing bus and train tickets, digital gold and book cooking gas cylinders. It will also expand its eCommerce and lending services, which was used 1 million times in three months after its rollout earlier this year.
“We aim to strengthen our data and alternative credit scoring strategy to provide better financial services to our target — the next billion Indian users. Our goal is to reach 100 million digital touchpoints, and become one of the top FinTech companies in India by 2022,” said Charlie Lee, founder of True Balance, in a statement, according to reports.
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