Financial services startup Groww is moving to India from the US
Lalit Keshre, co-founder and CEO of Groww
Fintech startup Groww has formally shifted its base of operations from the US back to India through a reverse pivot from its parent company, CEO Lalit Keshre said on Thursday.
Groww joins a growing number of startups planning to move their homes to the country. Many Indian startups based abroad are considering shifting or relocating their base to India. This includes companies involved in areas such as fintech, e-commerce, stock trading, healthcare and edtech.
“As of March 2024, Groww has completed its branch transition into India. For our customers, we have always been an India-based organization for all practical purposes from day 1. With this update, the Groww group and its subsidiaries are fully established in India. Today marks the completion of 8 years of Groww. There is still a long way to go,” Keshre wrote on microblogging platform X, formerly Twitter.
Walmart-backed PhonePe, another major fintech startup, shifted its base from Singapore to India in October 2022. As part of this it had to go through three steps. First, it moved all its operations, including insurance and asset broking, and all subsidiaries from PhonePe Singapore to PhonePe Pvt Ltd India. Secondly, PhonePe’s board approved the introduction of a new employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and the migration of over 3,000 employees of the PhonePe group. PhonePe’s investors, led by Walmart, had to pay around Rs 8,000 crore in taxes to enable the fintech company to shift its base to India.
In March last year, the government noticed that many Indian startups were based abroad and set up a committee to propose ways “to onshore Indian innovation” at the International Financial Services Center in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City .
Experts said it helped to be in India if you were preparing to list on the country’s stock exchanges through an initial public offering (IPO). Other factors include the rise of technology companies in India, investor confidence, a resilient economy and supportive government policies.
Singapore-based Eruditus is evaluating whether it would be feasible for the edtech startup to shift its base to India, sources said. They said fintech companies such as Pine Labs and Razorpay are also considering the shift.
In addition to local opportunities, fintech companies are making these efforts thanks to regulatory alignment with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In e-commerce, companies like Udaan and Meesho are also exploring similar moves. Online furniture brand Pepperfry is also one of them, according to sources. The aim is to list on the Indian stock exchanges and streamline the group structure.
Nasscom, the apex body for India’s $245 billion technology industry, has also proposed to the government that India-focused startups based abroad should be allowed to list on the domestic stock exchanges within the existing external structures .
In 2016, four Flipkart employees – Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal and Neeraj Singh – quit their jobs to start a venture that could make investing easy. They named this venture Groww and started operations in 2017.
Groww’s Keshre, an alumnus of IIT Bombay, looks after all aspects of the business, mainly the product and customer experience at Groww. Before starting Groww, Keshre held a senior product management role at Flipkart, where he launched and led Flipkart Quick and helped launch Flipkart Marketplace.
Previously, he founded an online learning company called Eduflix, and he was also one of the first team members at Ittiam Systems.
First print: May 10, 2024 | 1:34 am IST