Indiagold raises $12 million

Gold-based lending platform indiagold has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by PayU and Alpha Wave Incubation, with Better Tomorrow Ventures, 3one4 Capital and Rainmatter Capital as well as existing investor Leo Capital as participants.

Founded in 2020, Indiagold gives customers the option to store gold in lockers and offers a credit line for the deposited gold.

Here’s how it works: once a customer signs up on Indiagold, agents come to their house, inspect and weigh the gold and put it in a RFID sticker-attached tamper-proof bag. Then they put this bag in a steel box and get the customer to lock it with their fingerprint. Customers have access to Indiagold app where they can see realtime value of the gold items they have put in the locker. In the event these customers need to take a loan, the startup facilitates a line of credit to them within 30 seconds.

Indiagold claims to offer their lockers at a much affordable price — just a few dollars a year, as opposed to hundreds taken by banks. Indiagold also protects the customers’ gold with insurance coverage. Insurance partners include The New India Assurance Co. , and ICICI Lombard .