Tencent steps up expansion in India with investment in fintech start-up NiYO
- India is seeing a boom in number of internet users expected to surge more than 50 per cent to 650 million next year
- NiYO is a fintech start-up that helps manage people manage their finances and foreign exchange
Tencent Holdings increased its bets on India with an investment in a start-up that helps the country’s blue-collar workers manage their finances, as it sought to build an overseas presence to supplement its dominant China market.
Shenzhen-based Tencent, one of China’s most active corporate investors, led a US$35 million funding round in Bangalore-based digital banking company NiYO, which also serves outbound tourists with a foreign exchange service.
The company, founded by Pony Ma Huateng, is expanding beyond its core gaming and social media business, into services to business and industry, which it calls the industrial internet. In India, it made a US$1.4 billion joint investment in leading Indian e-commerce marketplace Flipkart together with Microsoft and eBay in 2017.
Tencent teamed up with SoftBank to invest US$1.1 billion in ride-hailing service Ola the same year. In 2018, it joined South Africa’s Naspers in a US$1 billion investment in Swiggy, an Indian food-delivery firm.
NiYO was founded in 2015 by Vinay Bagri, who worked for ICIC Bank and Standard Chartered Bank, and Virender Bisht, previously with MakeMyTrip.com. The start-up currently has 1 million users and aims to expand the number of users to five million in the three years, according to a statement on Tuesday.
