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Fintech startup Capital Float has acquired personal finance management firm Walnut for $30 Mn. The deal marks Capital Float’s first ever acquisition, which comes on the back of its recent foray into the consumer financing space. On the outset, the acquisition seems to have been done to consolidate Amazon and Sequoia backed company’s newly launched business in the personal finance space.
Following the acquisition, Walnut’s co-founders Patanjali Somayaji and Amit Bhor will join Capital Float’s senior management team while rest of the 35 team members will be absorbed into the operational team.
According to reports, serious discussions between the two companies were initiated almost three months ago. Reports further add that Capital Float’s Co-founder Sashank Rishyasringa saw strategic value in Walnut’s recent offering ‘Walnut Prime’ for growing its consumer finance business.
Besides, the Amazon backed Fintech startup can also benefit from Walnut’s unique credit assessment model, which asses credit worthiness of any potential loan seeker by looking into alternative sources like income and purchase capacity.
So what does Walnut Exactly do?
Walnut was founded in India’s educational hub Pune in 2014 with an aim to offer flawless personal finance management solutions. The company offers these 360 degree solutions through its mobile app that can help in checking card and bank balances, pay bills, track expenses and even facilitate peer-to-peer transactions.
The Pune based company claims that its mobile app is already a huge hit among the consumers. The company claims that nearly 7 Mn people have downloaded its app and has 1 Mn monthly active users and 300K daily active users.
Meanwhile, Capital Float is sitting pretty comfortable with a huge cash reserves in its kitty. Earlier this year, the company raised $22 Mn from Amazon in series C round, which was certainly a validation of company’s huge success in the Fintech space.
The company claims to have customer base of nearly 50,000 that are spread across nearly 300 cities. Its average loan size hovers around Rs 10 to 12 lakh.
