Alternative investment platform Jiraaf, which offers high-yield, fixed income investment solutions, has raised $7.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel Partners, Mankekar Family Office and Aspire Family Office.
This round also saw participation from multiple angel investors, including Capital A, founders of PharmEasy, Ramakant Sharma, co-founder Livspace, founders of Zetwerk, Anuj Jhaveri, director at Barclays, Hong Kong, and Shantanu Garg, managing director and Partner, BCG.
The fresh funds will go towards strengthening team for sourcing opportunities, credit assessment and customer service, Vineet Agrawal, co-founder of Jiraaf, said in a statement.
Founded in September 2021 by finance professionals Saurav Ghosh and Agrawal, Jiraaf offers non-market linked investment products to retail investors. It allows users to diversify investments across asset classes such as corporate debt, leasing, invoice discounting and revenue-based financing.
“We curate exclusive alternate fixed income products and through rigorous risk assessment and diligence ensure that the investors have access to high quality opportunities. Our vision is to build a convenient and credible platform for everything fixed income for investors,” Ghosh said.
The company claims to offer yields in the range of 8 – 20 per cent and tenors between 30 days to 3 years. According to the statement, Jiraaf has originated opportunities over Rs 250 crore over the last eight months and has more than 10,000 registered investors.
“There is a very strong demand for alternate fixed-income products among retail investors. India has nearly $2 trillion invested in fixed deposits and mutual fund industry is sized at $0.5 trillion which saw a 3x growth in last 5 years. Jiraaf is addressing a large market gap by offering diversified fixed income products which can form a meaningful part of every investor’s portfolio over the next decade especially in the current and forecasted macro-economic scenario,” Barath Shankar Subramanian, Partner at Accel Partners, said.
