Peer-to-peer payments platform Frex has raised ₹9.5 crore in a pre-seed funding round co-led by Zeropearl VC and White Venture Capital, with additional participation from several marquee strategic angels. The round saw investment from Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra (Urban Company), Pradeep Parameswaran, CRED founder Kunal Shah, and Rishabh Goel, among others.
The fresh capital will be deployed to expand Frex’s on- and off-ramp infrastructure across North America and India, strengthen its compliance and regulatory systems across major corridors, scale engineering and ledger infrastructure, and accelerate go-to-market initiatives focused on NRI and migrant worker communities, the company said.
Co-founded in 2025 by Aditya Varma, Himanshu Arora, and Nikhil Shanker, Frex is a peer-to-peer money transfer platform designed to make cross-border remittances instant, transparent and ultra-low cost. By combining blockchain-driven infrastructure with strict compliance frameworks and local banking integrations, Frex enables users to send money internationally at better-than-mid-market rates with near-instant settlement.
Frex aims to bring the simplicity of domestic digital payments to global remittances, addressing long-standing industry challenges such as multi-day settlement times, opaque pricing, and forex mark-ups that often range between 1% to 5%. The startup positions itself as a modern alternative to traditional remittance avenues, which remain slow, expensive, and complex for millions of global workers.
Since its launch in November 2025, the Gurugram-based startup has witnessed strong early traction, with rising transaction volumes among immigrant communities. Frex expects to cross $1 million in monthly transfers in the next two to three months.
Operating in a competitive space, Frex may directly or indirectly compete with players like Wise, Remitly, and Xoom, but aims to differentiate itself through real-time settlement, transparent pricing, and infrastructure-scale technology.
By: Arushi Agarwal
