[Funding alert] Crypto investment startup Flint raises $5.1M seed capital led by Sequoia, GFC

Flint, a global crypto investment app, has raised $5.1 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India and GFC. Coinbase Ventures, Hashed, IOSG, Better Capital, Antler India, and MSA Capital also participated in the round as part of 11 institutional investors. Close to 60 angel investors across the globe participated in the funding round as well.

Some of these include Sandeep Nailwal, Co-founder, Polygon; Jaynti Kanani, Co-founder, Polygon; Kunal Shah, Founder, CRED; Do Kwon (Founder, Terra); Nitin Gupta (Co-founder, Uni); Amulya Goyal (MD, Large global bank); Kunal Bahl (Co-founder, Snapdeal via Titan Capital); Rohit Bansal (Co-founder, Snapdeal via Titan Capital); Tanmay Bhat, Sanat Rao (GP, Blocktower Capital); Abhishek Nag (Director, Netflix India), Ajit Tripathi (Head of business at Aave), Marc Bhargava (Strategy, Coinbase), and Mahdi Raza (Ex-Robinhood).

According to a statement released by the startup, the fresh capital will help it accelerate bringing early users on board, enhance the product based on early feedback, and hire for senior positions across engineering, design, and product functions.

Flint also plans to allocate a significant portion of the funding to strengthen legal and risk functions, ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory norms, while also going above and beyond market standards to reduce business risk.

ALSO READ

Sequoia Capital India announces Surge 06 with total funding of $60M

Anshu Agrawal, Co-founder of Flint, said, 

“Flint’s mission is to make cryptocurrencies easy and accessible to everyone. We are at the tip of the iceberg and the opportunity that Web3 provides for the world is massive. As a brand, we simply intend to demystify crypto, provide easy-to-use products, and introduce a billion people to our inevitable future, ensuring Web3 becomes a part of our everyday lives."

He added, "We also want to thank all our investors for placing their trust in us, our mission, and for joining hands with an aim to make Flint the first-choice crypto app across the globe, where users can earn high and stable yields on their crypto assets via plenty of investment opportunities".

Founded in October 2021, the company currently offers a simple and stable income opportunity where users can earn up to 13 percent p.a. on their deposited funds. The company is taking a UX first approach for the retail users and building easy on-ramps.

Aakash Kapoor, VP, Sequoia India, said,

“Just the way billions of people were on-boarded onto the internet in the last decade, billions of users will be on boarded onto web3.0 in the next few years. We believe Anshu, Akshit, and the Flint team bring the right background in building consumer products as well as the web3 DNA that can enable massive distribution, and offer best-in-class and easy-to-understand financial products to its users”.  

Flint doesn’t expose users to volatile crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum. It only deals with stable cryptocurrencies like USDT, USDC, etc., that are free from crypto price fluctuations. Flint founders Akshit Bordia and Anshu Agrawal, who were previously product managers at CRED, started operations in January.

Ben Harburg, Managing Partner, MSA Capital said, “Indian demand for crypto investment products is highly underserved and inaccessible to most. We believe Flint’s vision to lower the barriers to entry for retail investors to access crypto investments, within a modest risk profile akin to fixed deposits, is crucial for onboarding and enabling the underbanked to build wealth. We have benchmarked and invested in similar models globally and believe that Anshu and Akshit to be amongst the best young entrepreneurs we’ve encountered”.

After a period of research and conversations with over 300 consumers, Flint first mapped the various segments of users interested in crypto and identified where its ideal users belong. The platform targets users in the age group of 25 to 40, who are looking to diversify a portion of their wealth into crypto, are financially stable but lack the time to invest in understanding the complexities and fundamentals of the crypto market.

Currently, the users are primarily from Tier-1 cities, who earn more than Rs 12 lakh per annum. They regularly use payment and investment apps, have been investing in mutual funds or other asset classes, are looking for simplicity, long holding periods and a credible brand.