Pencilton, a teen-focused fintech startup, has raised $330K in a pre-seed round led by neobank Jupiter, or Amica Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Several 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) and angel investor Tirumalareddy Karri participated in the round.
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.
Founded by Vishwajit Pureti, Ashish Singh, Pallavi Tipparaju, and Viraj Gadde in 2020 enable financial inclusion and digital financial literacy.
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.
VishwajitPureti, Co-founder and CEO, Pencilton, said, ” This sound 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, and more to help navigate the next steps as we scale.”
Pencilton has recently introduced the PencilCard, a RuPay debit card for teens across India that can be activated and managed via the Pencilton app. 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.
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 multiplying. We believe that the Pencilton team understands the space well and is solving the needs of both kids and parents. At Jupiter, we will continue to invest or partner with teams that are solving problems adjacent to our own and help make our ecosystem stronger.”