Direct-to-Consumer WealthTech Theme is Strong in India

smallcase, a direct-to-consumer WealthTech firm providing thematic pre-packaged portfolios to the retail investor in India, today announced a $50mm Series D funding round lead by elev8 Venture Partners, a new investor, with participation from State Street Global Advisors and Faering Capital. This is the latest in a series of fairly sizeable WealthTech funding rounds from India and shows the strength of WealthTech in that geography.

The direct-to-consumer strength in the Indian market makes sense to us as the number of mass affluent/HNW investors is growing well in excess of any sort of mathematical prediction of the future supply of human financial advisors. Technology seems to be the only reasonable answer. In the case of smallcase, they develop consumable model portfolios professionally designed around various investment themes. If you are looking for a pre-made basket on themes like "Aging of America" or some particular slice of AI, they may have one you can invest in off-the-shelf. We had a similar company here in the US years ago called Motif. They were ultimately acquired by Schwab in 2020.

smallcase purports to have 10mm users, which perhaps speaks to the power of the Indian retail investment market and why VCs seem to be taking an interest.

Link to announcement: https://www.smallcase.com/blog/smallcase-raises-50m-in-series-d-funding/