Hyderabad-based teen-focused fintech startup, Pencilton has announced that “It has raised $330K in pre-Seed round funding led by Jupiter (registered as Amica Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd).
The round also saw participation from many successful founders such as Nilesh Patel & Prashant Singh (Founders of LeadSquared), Ashish Sharma (MD, Innoven Capital), Abhishek Goyal (Founder of Tracxn), Himanshu Sharma (Founder, Aspiring Minds), Kunal Sinha (Founder, GlowRoad), Vignesh Ramanujam (Partner at Spoonfeed) & angel investor Tirumalareddy Karri.
Founded by VishwajitPureti, Ashish Singh, Pallavi Tipparaju, and Viraj Gadde in 2020, Pencilton offers a first-of-its-kind debit card, PencilCard, to teenagers and students to help them manage their expenses while teaching them the basics of money management.
Speaking of the funding, and enthused VishwajitPureti, Co-founder &CEO, Pencilton, said, “This round is predominantly of great strategic importance as it serves as a vehicle for us to have some of the best minds from the fintech, as well as the startup ecosystem, join us on our mission. It gives us access to stellar expertise across fintech, fundraising, GTM, user acquisition & more to help navigate the next steps as we scale up.”
“We are incredibly excited for the journey ahead where we are going to announce many industry-leading initiatives that will help bring the best of fintech tools as well as digital financial literacy to teens & students across India,” Vishwajit further added.
Pencilton has recently introduced the PencilCard, a RuPay debit card for teens across India that can be activated and managed via the Pencilton app.
Talking about their investment, Rahool Gadkari, Director of Product, Jupiter, said, “Jupiter is very excited to invest in Pencilton. The teen/pre-teen banking segment is nascent and growing rapidly. We believe that the Pencilton team understands the space well and is passionately solving both kids’ and parents’ needs. At Jupiter, we will continue to invest or partner with teams which are solving problems adjacent to our own and help make our ecosystem stronger.”