The Indian venture fund Peak XV Partners (earlier Sequoia India) which has recently reoriented around fintech, led one of the major rounds by investing $35 million in a Sydney-headquartered financial technology firm named Shift. This investment comes after leaders in Peak XV supported Shift with a $27 million Series C in February 2023 before changing the venture fund’s name to Peak XV.
Mission of Shift
Shift, formerly known as GetCapital founded in 2014 offers various business credit and payment services. Such products include overdrafts, term loans, vehicle and equipment financing, and trade accounts. Fintech is competing with other financial intermediaries such as Prospa and Judo Bank which targets small businesses with financing requirements up to $1 million depending on the turnover.
Unique Underwriting Models and Fresh Funds for Market Leadership
Shift’s strengths are its underwriting models and, quite possibly, customer orientation. Trends over the past few years have shown that Shift has been able to withstand the worst that economic changes have to offer in terms of sales growth and profitability. Its focus on using data to inform its business decisions and offering products that are unique in the market has placed it in a competitive position.
The fresh capital will support Shift’s goal of being the market leader in credit and payments to companies in Australia. Jamie Osborn the founder and CEO indicated that these funds would be used to reinvest into proprietary data models and platforms to strengthen credit decision-making and customer experience. Apart from this, Shift has been in operation for over ten years and has supplied over $3.5 billion in funding to over 25000 businesses making it well suited for this lofty goal.
Perspective of Peak XV
Rohit Agarwal, the Managing Director of Peak XV, described the lack of competition in the business credit market. He endorsed Shift for its strategic direction mentioning that it had registered tremendous success, including the periods of unfavorable business cycles. Thus, Shift receives support from Peak XV as the latter continues with the strategic investments; the contributions made support Shift’s plans and innovation.
Image Source: Peak XV
Peak XV’s Investment Portfolio
Peak XV Partners also known as Sequoia Capital India & SEA is one of the fastest-growing venture capital and growth investing companies. Four hundred plus investments across India and South East Asia. It has supported more than 50 unicorns and 40 companies with revenues over $100M+. This has shown that Peak XV has contributed positively towards several IPOs, showing that the firm can effectively source and develop promising startups.
Peak XV is also involved in outreach to founders with programs such as Surge, which is for rapid growth, Spark for women founders, which focuses on CEOs of growth-stage start-ups, and Pathfinders which connects founders with domain experts. The employees from this firm sit in 5 offices across the globe, and there is a workforce of employees from 14 different nationalities.
Conclusion
Peak XV has invested in Shift highlights the relevance of fintech in economic advancement and support of companies. While Shift is continuing to diversify into more services it continues to remain an important factor in restructuring the Australian financial environment for businessmen and companies.
