slice, a new-age credit and payment start-up, has raised a cumulative debt of ₹165 crore in pandemic-struck FY21 from 18 leading financial institutions. This includes Northern Arc Capital Limited, Vivriti Capital Private Limited, AU Small Finance Bank, Incred Financial Services Limited, Pace Fincap Private Limited, Western Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd, and Innoven Capital India Pvt Ltd among others. Out of this, the company raised ₹126 crores in the last five months of FY21.
Catering to India’s youth, slice has over 3,00,000 members and 9,00,000 on waitlist today, 70 per cent of them being young working professionals. The company has processed a transaction volume of over $250 million and plans to achieve a GTV (Gross Transaction Value) run rate of $1 billion FY22. With this, slice also plans to grow its member base by more than 3X to 1 million in 12 months.
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“Last year was volatile, which makes it even more empowering for us to have such strong financial institutions show solidarity with our vision. The number of institutions investing in us has grown significantly in FY21 alone, a validation of our strategy of keeping the lowest NPAs in the industry,” said Rajan Bajaj, founder and CEO, slice, in a statement.
“Our priority right now is to support the country in every way possible as we all collectively fight the second wave. We have all learnt several lessons from the pandemic last year which will help us put our best foot forward. Customer centricity and business agility is more important in today’s times than ever before,” added Bajaj.
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Despite the pandemic, the company grew by 125 per cent in 2020 and has recorded a 40-50 per cent increase in average customer spend. The company also plans to double its employee strength in 2021 with a major focus on tech, product and design. Founded in 2016, slice’s flagship products is the slice card, a challenger credit card issued in partnership with Visa.