Bengaluru-based fintech startup Spense has raised $2.8 million in a Seed funding round led by Arkam Ventures, with participation from Razorpay Ventures, Atrium Ventures, and GrowthCap Ventures, along with prominent fintech and technology leaders including Kunal Shah (CRED), Madhusudhan E (KreditBee), Ravishankar (Active.ai), Suresh Rayasam Venkatasubbaih (LinkedIn), and Sayandeb Banerjee (The Math Company).
The funding marks an important milestone for Spense as it strengthens investor confidence in the growing opportunity around asset-backed credit infrastructure in India.
Notably, GrowthCap Ventures, which led Spense’s pre-seed round in May 2025 as the company’s first institutional investor, has continued to back the startup in this latest round, reflecting strong conviction in both the founding team and the market opportunity.
Solving a Structural Credit Problem in India
India’s credit ecosystem has traditionally leaned heavily toward unsecured lending. However, a massive pool of financial assets including fixed deposits, mutual funds, equities, invoices, and other collateralizable assets remains largely underutilized within the formal lending ecosystem.
Spense aims to change that.
Founded by Pawan Kumar and Srinivas Krishnamurthy, the startup is building a bank-native infrastructure layer that enables banks to transform customer-owned assets into modern credit products without overhauling existing banking systems.
Rather than treating access to credit purely as a risk problem, Spense believes the real challenge lies in infrastructure. The company’s platform helps financial institutions unlock liquidity against customer assets, making credit more accessible while reducing lending risk.
Powering the Future of Asset-Backed Lending
Spense has already partnered with leading banks to launch secured credit cards and credit lines backed by customer assets.
The startup’s growth metrics highlight rising adoption in the market:
- Works with 7 major banks
- Powers 2 lakh+ active cards
- Issues 40,000+ cards every month
- Contributes to nearly 8% of India’s monthly credit card issuance
These numbers underscore growing demand for modern lending infrastructure that bridges traditional banking with new-age digital credit products. As banks seek more efficient and secure lending models, asset-backed credit is emerging as a compelling category.
Fresh Capital to Fuel Product Expansion
The newly raised capital will be used to accelerate Spense’s next phase of growth.
Key focus areas include:
- Deepening partnerships with banks
- Accelerating product innovation
- Expanding engineering and go-to-market teams
- Launching Credit Line on UPI (CLOU)
- Building the intelligence and infrastructure layer for future credit products
The company is particularly focused on integrating credit more seamlessly into India’s fast-growing digital payments ecosystem.
Founders’ Vision for the Next Era of Banking
Commenting on the fundraise, Pawan Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO of Spense, said the company sees credit access fundamentally as an infrastructure challenge.
“India’s credit challenge is often viewed as a risk problem. We believe it is fundamentally an infrastructure problem. India does not have a shortage of assets it has a shortage of infrastructure that can convert those assets into usable credit,” he said.
He further emphasized that the future of banking will be shaped by two major forces: asset-unlocking infrastructure and AI-powered intelligence.
According to Pawan, anyone holding a valuable financial asset should be able to access modern credit products efficiently.
Meanwhile, Srinivas Krishnamurthy, Co-Founder and CTO, highlighted the evolution of banking infrastructure.
“For decades, banks digitized accounts, payments, and transactions. The next phase of banking is the digitization of collateral itself,” he noted.
Why Investors Are Betting Big on Spense
For investors, Spense represents a foundational layer in India’s evolving fintech stack.
Pratekk Agarwaal, Founder and General Partner at GrowthCap Ventures, said the firm backed Spense early because it believed asset-backed credit would become one of the defining themes in financial services.
He praised the founders for their clarity of vision and execution, particularly in building infrastructure that enables banks to unlock liquidity at scale.
GrowthCap’s continued investment reflects its broader strategy of identifying category-defining startups early and supporting them through successive growth stages.
A New Credit Infrastructure for India
As India’s financial services sector evolves, the future of lending may increasingly shift toward models that are secured, intelligent, and infrastructure-driven.
Consumers today hold significant value in financial assets, but much of that value remains illiquid in practical use.
Startups like Spense are working to change that by turning dormant assets into accessible credit opportunities.
With fresh capital, strong institutional backing, and growing banking partnerships, Spense is positioning itself at the center of India’s next major fintech transformation where credit is no longer limited by traditional underwriting alone, but powered by infrastructure, intelligence, and asset liquidity.
By : Vanshika Tayal
