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| Pencilton Founder's Team |
Funds to be utilized for product enhancement and initial growth
Hyderabad, 27 July 2021: Pencilton, a teen-focused fintech startup, has announced raising $330K in a pre-seed round 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.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. A major upgrade is expected to its debit card in a few weeks that works with the Pencilton app to enable financial inclusion and digital financial literacy for teenagers. With the new funding, Pencilton aims at product enhancement by building industry-leading backend systems for card issuance, management, and further launching of upgraded products. The startup was founded by VishwajitPureti, Ashish Singh, Pallavi Tipparaju, and Viraj Gadde in 2020.
Speaking of the funding, an 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. The app is built to be the epicenter of not just the finances of teens but also their understanding of money. Teens can use the debit card to manage, receive and spend their pocket money through the help of the Pencilton app. In addition, parents can also use the app to give pocket money, setting parental controls such as the spend limits, approval of money requests, etc.
Pencilton chose the RuPay card platform as it is a homegrown product built in India for 'Bharat' is in line with the Government of India's 'Make in India' policy and the superior privacy it offers data is stored within India. It also allows Pencilton to work closely with NPCI to innovate on various aspects of the fintech ecosystem that will soon help bring some never-before-seen features of fintech, not just in India but the whole world, to the fingertips of the next generation.
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."
As part of its larger goal, Pencilton aspires to educate the younger generation on financial literacy and management and become the most innovative and prominent player in this space.
About Penciton:
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Pencilton is a teen-focused fintech startup in India, founded by VishwajitPureti, Ashish Singh, Pallavi Tipparaju, and Viraj Gadde in 2020. The company enables the financial inclusion and digital financial literacy of 250 million teens & students across India through PencilCard. This RuPay debit card can be activated within a few seconds via the Pencilton app. Teenagers and students can use the card to receive, manage & spend their pocket money while managing it all from the Pencilton app. Parents can use the app to give pocket money, set parental controls such as spend limits, approve money requests, etc. The fintech startup launched its beta version in December 2020, aiming to educate the young generation to understand the importance of money.
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