Upswing Financial Technologies, an open finance B2B ecosystem enabler, founded by ex-bankers Anupam Bagchi and Nihar Gupta, has raised $4 million from marquee global fund QED Investors and a clutch of renowned fintech founders.
QED, a fintech-focused fund whose investments feature 25 unicorns globally including Nubank, Credit Karma and SoFi, was co-founded by Nigel Morris, who previously co-founded Capital One.
The funding will be used by Upswing in building plug-and-play platforms for open finance and help fintechs and consumer tech players offer financial services seamlessly. The company is working with a few leading banks on the stack which will go live in a phased manner in 2022.
Anupam Bagchi, Co-Founder, Upswing said, “In this decade of banking, consumers will opt to access their financial services from any digital interface, which may necessarily not belong to a bank. Upswing’s open finance-as-a-service platform is highly customisable, simple and modular and will significantly reduce the integration efforts of consumer tech players to launch financial products like savings accounts, deposits and lending services.”
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“We are thrilled to join Upswing on this journey,” added Sandeep Patil, Partner and Head of Asia at QED Investors. “In the coming decade, consumer companies will ubiquitously offer banking and financial products. Upswing will be a vital ecosystem player providing consumer-centric solutions as well as the right compliance and security infrastructure. Anupam and Nihar bring deep sector experience and complementary expertise. We have no doubt that they will assemble an all-star team to tackle this vital mission.”
“We feel a deep understanding of the banking world is a prerequisite to make a nuanced open finance platform, said Nihar Gupta, Co-Founder, Upswing. He added, “Our extensive understanding of banking systems and fintech needs will help us in building platforms, which will essentially empower the financial institutions with greater reach. It will allow consumer tech players to offer differentiated financial products in a much shorter timeframe of weeks instead of months, sometimes even years.”
The round also saw participation from funds like Better Capital, Amara VC, Multiply Ventures, Capier Investments, Utsav Somani from AngelList.
Prior to Upswing, Anupam and Nihar were senior career bankers with institutions including Kotak, Axis, Standard Chartered and NPCI. They also helped build neobank Jupiter in their leadership roles.
