Cross-border digital payments startup Aspora raises $93 million from Sequoia Capital, Greylock and others

Time of India

a day ago

Y Combinator-backed
cross-border payments
startup
Aspora
has raised $93 million over three equity funding rounds between September 2024 and May 2025, giving it a $500-million valuation, according to its founder, Parth Garg.
The London-headquartered startup, which offers remittance services to immigrant diaspora, raised the funds over three rounds in the last eight months. Its first institutional funding of $5.8 million from Hummingbird Ventures had come in 2022.
Garg told ET that the startup raised $5 million in an extension of the first round in September 2024, after which came a $35-million infusion led by US-based venture firm
Sequoia Capital
along with participation from US-based Greylock Partners.
Last month, Aspora secured another $53 million in financing, led by Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners, with participation from London-based venture fund Quantum Light. Angel investors Balaji Srinivasan, ex-CTO of Coinbase, Sundeep Jain, previously the CPO of Uber, and Prasanna Sankar, cofounder of Rippling, were among the other participants in the round.
Overall, the startup has raised more than $98 million since inception.
'Aspora's current valuation is $500 million,' Garg said from London.
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Garg had started the business in Bengaluru, but earlier this year shifted base to London, which he said made it easier for him to coordinate global operations of the brand.
For the California-headquartered venture firm Sequoia Capital, this is the first major investment in an Indian-origin startup offering services to Indian consumers.
In the middle of 2023, Sequoia Capital had separated from its units in China and India and Southeast Asia. While the Chinese unit was renamed HongShan, the India entity was rebranded into
Peak XV Partners
.
Peak XV Partners has set up a team in the US to scout for early investment opportunities in that part of the world. ET had reported in April that Peak XV Partners is
looking to raise $1.2 billion
for its first independent fund after the spinoff from Sequoia Capital.
Aspora was previously known as Vance, but the company had to overhaul the brand's identity after JD Vance became the US vice president.
Garg said all his brand promotions and online marketing efforts were getting branded as political advertisements because of the similarity in names.
The company has around 250,000 users who use the platform to remit money back to India. The startup offers services to consumers in the UK, European Union region and the UAE.
'We are launching in the US in July, and Canada, Australia and Singapore by the end of the year,' he said.
While headquartered in London Aspora has around 30 out of its 50 people in Bengaluru and the remaining mostly in the UK and the UAE.
'People use our platform to send money home to their parents, for investments to buy property or invest in alternative assets, we target communities and social groups of Indians in these countries to popularise our product,' Garg said.
Aspora gets around 55% of its customers via referrals and around 20% from performance marketing channels.
The startup has kept its customer acquisition costs at a fraction of competition, mainly by leveraging local Indian communities which are socially very active in these countries.
Aspora competes with the companies such as Remitly and Wize and is disrupting the business which used to be dominated by banks and the likes of Western Union.