Kiwi, a fintech startup enabling RuPay credit cards on UPI, has raised $24 million (₹208 crore) in its Series B funding round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, with participation from Nexus Venture Partners, Stellaris Venture Partners, and Omidyar Network.
The funds will be used to accelerate Kiwi’s product roadmap, strengthen unit economics, and scale customer acquisition.
Founded in 2022 by Siddharth Mehta, Mohit Bedi, and Anup Agrawal, Kiwi has already issued 2 lakh+ RuPay credit cards, powering 5 million+ monthly merchant transactions across 600 cities. The startup has partnerships with YES Bank and AU Small Finance Bank, and is in talks to add two more large banking partners this fiscal.
With a target to issue 1 million RuPay credit cards by 2027, Kiwi is betting on India’s 350M+ UPI user base, which is nearly 8–10x larger than the credit card user base. The acceptance network for credit on UPI is estimated to be 35x larger than that of traditional credit cards.
Competitors like LazyPay, OneCard, Uni, and Slice are also scaling credit on UPI solutions as India’s digital payments ecosystem rapidly evolves.
According to TheKredible, founders Siddharth Mehta, Anup Agrawal, and Mohit Bedi each held ~16.2% stake post-Series A, while Nexus Venture Partners was the largest external stakeholder. The dilution in Series B will determine Kiwi’s updated cap table.
By: Arushi Agarwal
