Fintech startup Sqrrl gets backing from Equanimity Venture Fund in pre-Series A round

Delhi-based Sqrrl Fintech Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates investment app Sqrrl, has raised $1 million (Rs 6.8 crore) in a pre-Series A round of funding from Equanimity Venture Fund, which counts emerging markets guru Mark Mobius as a member of its investment committee.

In a press statement, the company said that the fresh capital will be used to pursue “aggressive growth and add to its product and tech prowess.”

Sqrrl also aims to invest in new-age technologies, especially machine learning and artificial intelligence, to sharpen its product recommendation and smoothen its on-boarding process.

The app enables users to invest in high-performing mutual funds based on their investment needs, risks and goals.

“The Sqrrl team is working hard to reach out to the broader India with its very highly intuitive offering available in nine Indian languages,” said Rajesh Sehgal, managing partner of Equanimity Investments.

As part of the deal, Sehgal will join the board of Sqrrl.

Burgeon, a boutique firm focused on startups, represented Sqrrl as the legal advisor for the deal.

The app was launched in March last year by Dhananjay Singh, Sanjeev Sharma, and Samant Sikka.

The Sqrrl app claims to have amassed more than 150,000 downloads across Android and iOS devices. The company said that more than 76% of Sqrrl’s users are under the age of 35.

“We have made a good start by building a personalised recommendation engine using analytics and data science,” said co-founder Singh. “Further, we plan to employ machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve the recommendation engine, customer experience and security.”

Sqrrl was incubated at JioGenNext, a startup accelerator program run by Reliance Jio and Microsoft Ventures.

Among Sqrrl’s advisors are Shripad Nadkarni, an angel investor and marketing guru; Advait Dikshit, Business and Change Management Expert; and Carl Richards, a New York Times columnist and author.

In addition, Ravi Sud, former Chief Financial Officer of Hero MotoCorp, and Rajesh Cherayil, Chief executive of a private equity fund Nereus Capital, are strategic investors in Sqrrl.