Chhavideep Singh
Source: LinkedIn
Aeldra Financial is a California-based financial technology start-up that has focused its operations in the Indian market. Recently, the start-up is looking forward to raise USD 25 million in its latest funding round from existing and new investors.
According to several reports, it has been suggested that the main reason for the company to be planning to raise funds is entering newer markets and newer geographies for a diversified growth. The company is known for offering premium banking services to Indians with US banks through its mobile application. According to the company profile, the financial technology company is verified, all transactions and deposits in these accounts are guaranteed and backed by Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation of the United States of America as mentioned in a report by Economic Times.
Under the US-based LRS Scheme which is the Liberalised Remittances Scheme, Aeldra Financials does not charge any transaction fees from its customers which serves as one of its biggest features. The concept of catering to Indians in the United States sounds a bit different and unusual, but the truth is that the United States of America has a large Indian diaspora in its ecosystem. Indian students, their parents, small and medium businesses and freelancers all together make Aeldra, a preferable financial technology as these are the company’s main customers.
Coming back to the company’s funding statistics, as mentioned in several reports, Aeldra Financial has previously raised USD 3 million in funding as a part of its latest Series C financing round, mainly from a clutch of different investors including Lorentzen Investments, New Vernon, co-founder of Twitter- Greg Kidd, MFW among a few others, according to a report by Economic Times.
Analysts say that there is a huge demand in the United States’ market for investing in local stocks and other assets. Aeldra Financial will not leave the opportunity unattended and has mentioned in a statement that they will soon be launching an investment platform as well.
You must be thinking, if Aeldra is offering its services for free to the customers, how are they making money, let alone profit? Well, the answer to this has been mentioned in a report stating that the company received a major portion of inter-change fee from Mastercard, according to India Times. Other than this, the company also received an interest arbitrage from Blue Ridge Bank which pays about 3.5% interest to the said depositors. Aeldra Financial pays them 2% and keeps the remaining 1.5% with themselves. It is important to note that the financial market offers zero interest for saving deposits.