Bright Money, an AI-powered personal finance platform, has secured $31 million in a Series A fundraising round anchored by Sequoia Capital India, Falcon Edge Capital, and Hummingbird Ventures at an unreported valuation.
Several angel investors participated in the round, including Cred founder Kunal Shah, InMobi co-founders Naveen Tewari and Abhay Singhal, Jupiter founder Jitendra Gupta, Alphabet board member Ram Shriram and Uber regional general manager for Asia Pacific Pradeep Parameswaran.
The fresh capital will be used to strengthen the company’s workforce and product portfolio across markets. It already employs 150 data scientists, engineers, and customer experience team members in Bengaluru, and expects to double that number as it expands its public launch. Bright Money, which is planned to launch initially in the United States, will soon be available to customers in India and Southeast Asia.
Bright Money, which was founded in 2019, promises to assist customers to take control of their debt and start developing real wealth by handling all of the data-crunching calculations and financial planning on their behalf. Bright Money allows its customers to thoroughly examine their bank and credit card transactions and make financial decisions by using the platform.
Its founding workforce is almost solely composed of data scientists and AI professionals who previously worked together at ad-tech startup InMobi. Avi Patchava, Avinash Ramakanth, and Varun Modi are all former InMobi employees, whereas Petko Plachkov, a financial services pioneer previously working with Mckinsey, Amit Bendale, a veteran data scientist, and Alex Seyfert, a consumer tech product leader from Amazon are among them.
Avi Patchava, Co-founder of Bright Money said in a press release, “When we started building Bright Money in 2019, we set out to launch a unique system powered by data science to help our customers organize their finances and tackle their debt. The Series A funding we have secured will allow us to take our platform to the next level, by providing users with a transformative journey with their money to really achieve their financial futures.”
Bright Money claims that its proprietary AI-driven personal finance platform, MoneyScience, has benefited over 30,000 Americans, handling hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, and is linked with 14,000 banks across the United States. On average, customers utilize the service to settle down more than $2,200 in credit card debt each year, saving $750 in fees and interest, and enhancing their credit scores by 30-100 points.
The platform exclusively targets hardworking, middle-income Americans between the ages of 25 and 40 who earn $50,000-$100,000 annually. Banks, and even modern “neobanks,” have consistently neglected these Americans.
