Kaleidofin has raised $2.8 million (around Rs 180 million) in a seed round of investments led by Omidyar Network, the Silicon Valley-based impact investing firm established by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. Kaleidofin is a financial technology platform that propels customers toward achieving their life goals by providing them with intuitive and tailored financial solutions. Blume Ventures and individual investors—including Israeli serial entrepreneur and inventor, Professor Shlomo Ben-Haim—have also participated in the round. This is Professor Ben-Haim’s first investment in India.

“We believe that everyone deserves and requires access to financial solutions that are intuitive and easy to use, flexible and personalized to real goals. This can make financial progress and financial freedom possible for everyone. Kaleidofin aims to be the financial advisor for potentially 600 million plus informal sector customers, all delivered in a simple, easy to use mobile app. No more fitting customers to products, the customer is always at the centre. The Kaleidofin platform will ensure every customer gets the right solution.” said Sucharita Mukherjee, founder of Kaleidofin.

It is estimated that more than 200 million households in India have no access to formal savings, insurance and investments. Kaleidofin seeks to tap into this enormous market opportunity via its curated financial solutions platform. In order to offer customers the right product or service—Kaleidofin partners with best-in-class financial services providers across credit, insurance, savings, and investments, using intelligent algorithms to match the most appropriate solution to each customer’s goal. The company also leverages the full India stack to provide customer and product partners with a seamless integration to the platform, including eKnowyourcustomer (eKYC), eSignature (eSign) and Electronic National Automated Clearing House (eNACH).

“Even though India has made strides in improving access to the formal financial system, uptake of services and products by Indian consumers has been slow, because they find that traditional banking or insurance is not relevant to their life’s context”, said Smita Aggarwal, director of investments at Omidyar Network and Kaleidofin’s newest board member. “We are excited that Kaleidofin uses state-of-the-art technologies to understand people's unique needs and offer bundled solutions to mass market consumers to help improve their financial lives.

Kaleidofin acquires customers through partnerships with banks and NBFC and microfinance institutions (MFI) that work with informal sector customers, and directly through its mobile app. Long-term customer partners include SEWA Bank and Sonata Micro Finance with a combined customer network of more than 1.7 million people. Financial solutions are delivered to customers through strategic partnerships with leading institutions, such as Bharti AXA and ICICI Pru Life on insurance and ICICI Pru MF, UTI, Aditya Birla, Franklin Templeton, SBI and HDFC in the investments space. Using the funds raised in this round of investments, Kaleidofin plans to expand its network to include partners in other segments, such as agents, banking correspondents, cooperatives, self-help groups, and microfinance institutions to deliver suitable financial solutions to the underserved at a faster scale.

Since its launch in February 2017, the Kaleidofin app has been already deployed by SEWA Bank across all its branches, staff, and agents.

Rajiv C Lochan, CEO and managing director of the Hindu Group, has also joined Kaleidofin’s board as an independent director.