Participated · Series A · Dec 2021

Bureau is a San Francisco-based provider of a platform for businesses to verify customer identities and prevent fraud during online transactions. Its platform removes risk and blocks fraud concurrently by spotting abuse, monitoring transactions and enabling seamless identity verification. Led by founder and CEO Ranjan Reddy, the system has verified more than 600 million identities on behalf of over 150 customers. The company raised $30M in a Series B round led by Sorenson Capital, with participation from PayPal Ventures, Commerce Ventures, GMO Venture Partners and Village Global. Bureau intends to use the funds to expand operations and accelerate product development. Bureau builds an identity verification platform that maps digital persons and physical identities, tokenizing them behind mobile numbers to help companies prevent fraud and meet compliance. Its technology combines document verification, OCR, facematch, biometric checks, government database and AML checks, device and IP signals, and link analysis to assess identity risk. The platform is used across banking, fintech, insurance, the gig economy and real‑money gaming to detect mule accounts, synthetic IDs, account takeover, and to expand lending to new‑to‑credit customers. Bureau says it verified 300 million identities through its platform and grew customer and revenue numbers 6x over the past 12 months. It will use the new funding to invest in data and AI capabilities to automate decisioning and to expand coverage from 20 to more than 100 markets. Bureau positions itself as not being a data broker, sharing decisions rather than consumer data as part of its tokenized privacy architecture. Bureau offers a frictionless identity verification and fraud protection platform delivered via a single API to automate onboarding decisions and process insured users and transactions. The product focuses on end-to-end customer onboarding and fraud prevention for mobile-first enterprises. Bureau is ISO 27001:2013 certified and counts customers across fintech and financial services, including Jupiter Money, Goibibo, Aditya Birla Capital, ICICI Prudential, India Gold, and PhonePe. The company plans to use new funding to enhance its products and expand its footprint in India and South‑East Asia. It also intends to double down on capabilities such as account takeover prevention, transaction monitoring, and solutions for return-to-origin (RTO) and chargebacks use cases. Bureau was founded in 2020 by Reddy.

Participated · Series B · Jun 2020

Slice issues physical and virtual cards aimed at millennials and lets professionals and students buy collateral-free goods and services on estimated monthly installments (EMIs) via an app to build credit scores. The company is led by co-founder Rajan Bajaj and is Bengaluru-based. In November 2021 Slice’s Series C valued the company at over $1.5 billion; the article reports $340 million raised to date. Slice has pursued financial-sector expansion, including a March 2022 acquisition of a 5% stake in North East Small Finance Bank for roughly $3.42 million and an announced merger with the bank in October 2023. The business reported a 59.8% increase in losses to Rs 406 crore for the fiscal year ended March 2023 and showed 3X growth, and it has not yet filed FY24 annual results. The company has raised multiple debt tranches this year as part of its broader financing strategy. Slice is a consumer lending and payments startup that provides credit and payments solutions. The company has pursued bank partnerships, acquiring a 5% stake in Guwahati-headquartered North East Small Finance Bank and announcing a merger with NESFB to expand financial accessibility. Slice has raised $340 million to date and was valued at over $1.5 billion during its Series C in November 2021. According to reporting, its revenue jumped to around Rs 870 crore in FY23, while operating revenue grew to Rs 283.08 crore in FY22 from Rs 67.7 crore in FY21. Losses widened to Rs 253.67 crore in FY22, reflecting increased operating losses. Gunosy Capital is reported as the largest shareholder with a 14.84% stake and co-founder Rajan Bajaj holds 8.21%. Slice offers credit-card features including rewards, 2% cashback, and a buy-now-pay-later option with merchants such as Amazon and MakeMyTrip. Launched in 2019 and headquartered in Bengaluru, the startup serves over 12 million Indians and is issuing roughly 300,000–400,000 cards per month. Recently it added UPI support to drive daily engagement; the UPI product is reported to be gaining strong early traction. Slice is focused on broadening its payments offerings while working to make its core credit business profitable in the coming months. The company targets underserved consumers who lack traditional credit access by using modern underwriting systems to expand card eligibility. Slice issues multiple consumer credit cards and card products aimed at tech‑savvy young professionals, and provides features such as no‑fee bill installments over three months and merchant discounts. The company uses its own underwriting system and has launched ultra‑low‑limit products (including a $27‑limit card) to reach underpenetrated segments. Slice says it issues over 200,000 cards each month, has a registered user base of over 5 million and a waitlist of more than 1 million users. The median age of its customers is 27, which the company says mirrors its team. A source quoted in the articles reported an annual revenue run rate of over $60 million. Planned product work includes adding UPI support, new card products (including a teen‑focused card) and a decentralized identity product called '&ID'; Slice is also hiring and offering new hires a three‑day week with steady pay and benefits. Slice is a Bangalore-headquartered fintech that has built a "super card" and companion app to simplify credit-card signup and usage for millennials and Gen Z. The product lowers barriers to credit for users who are often ineligible for traditional cards, offers up to 2% instant cash back, and surfaces hyperlocal restaurant deals. Slice issues credit limits from its own balance sheet and supports in-app payments including QR-code purchases, plus a bill-splitting feature that allows up to three months of interest-free payments. The company has amassed over 3 million users and says it is profitable; it also reports that more than 65% of members see credit scores climb to 730 within six months of joining. Slice says roughly 50% of new customers previously held competitor cards and that more than half of those switch Slice to be their primary card; it expects to convert over 80% to primary use in the next six to eight months. The startup recovered from pandemic-related declines, reporting May as its best month and 25% growth in June, and plans to use new funding to develop additional features.