Brands
BankBazaar.com raises Rs 375 crore led by Amazon
MUMBAI: BankBazaar.com has raised Rs 375 crore ($60 Million) in its Series C round of funding led by Amazon with participation from Fidelity Growth Partners and Mousse Partners. Existing investors Sequoia Capital and Walden International also participated in the Series C funding round.
The funds will be primarily deployed towards technology integration, hiring and strengthening partner relationships and to creating a truly phenomenal end-to-end customer experience in order to grow in the online financial services category as a market leader. The company will also invest to upscale its marketing and branding effort to reach out to a larger number of consumers and create a house-hold financial services brand in India.
BankBazaar is also investing heavily on its mobile app. The BankBazaar app, available on both the Android & iOS platforms, will not only help consumers get financial products with ease, but also educate them and help them manage their finances better.
The company plans to also launch other personal finance products to help consumers clinch the best deals. The company is rapidly increasing the depth of its portfolio offerings and has signed on more than 23 bank partners to give the widest range of options to the consumer, available online and via its Android & iOS apps.
With this round of investment, BankBazaar is well positioned to aggressively grow the pie of consumers looking for financial products online and be a thought leader in making it simple for consumers seeking financial products in India.
“With the rapidly evolving online consumer segment across categories, we have seen great demand for this platform. We are currently looking to expand the category as we reinvest all earnings in growing the business intelligently,” said BankBazaar.com CEO Adhil Shetty.
“This investment from Amazon, Fidelity Growth Partners and Mousse Partners reposes faith in our vision and gives us strength to achieve the next phase of growth for the company. It will reinforce our leadership in the country’s online financial market place, as we aim to simplify the sourcing of best financial services – be it loans, credit cards and other personal finance products – for consumers,” he added.
“We are delighted to welcome Amazon to the BankBazaar partnership. The company has made great strides in the last two years and become the premier consumer destination for financial products. With this fund raise, BankBazaar plans to innovate even more to provide the best and fastest experience for consumers,” informed Sequoia Capital managing director Gautam Mago.
Since the last round of funding, BankBazaar’s business model has evolved. The number of transactions on the platform has grown five times since then. The company is actively expanding its product portfolio and depth of its partnerships in each product line. The company is also focusing on made-for-mobile web service and mobile platforms in order to enable larger connect with the audience. Presently, 40 per cent of the users connect to BankBazaar through smartphones. Additionally, online loan applications across home, personal and auto loans are growing by 90 per cent, compared to 15 per cent growth in offline.
Brands
Google nears Nvidia in race for world’s most valuable company
Market cap gap narrows as Google hits $4.65 trillion, Nvidia at $4.86 trillion.
MUMBAI: In the AI gold rush, even the giants are sprinting and Google is suddenly gaining ground. Google is rapidly closing in on Nvidia in the race to become the world’s most valuable publicly listed company, with the gap between the two narrowing sharply amid diverging stock momentum. The tech giant’s market capitalisation has surged to around $4.65 trillion, following a more than 140 per cent rise in its share price over the past year.
That rally has added over $2.6 trillion in value in just 12 months, including nearly $900 billion since January alone. Its stock recently hovered at $381.80, slipping marginally by 0.04 per cent, but still reflecting strong upward momentum.
Nvidia, meanwhile, continues to hold the top spot with a valuation of approximately $4.86 trillion. The chipmaker crossed the $5 trillion milestone in October last year and peaked at $5.27 trillion on 27 April. However, its shares have largely plateaued over the past six months, rising just 0.2 per cent recently to $199.99.
The contrast in trajectories is striking. While Nvidia has seen relatively flat movement, Google has gained over 36 per cent in the same six-month period. Barron’s estimates suggest that if current trends hold, the valuation gap could shrink to as little as $190 million by the time Nvidia reports its first-quarter earnings on 20 May.
Daily momentum paints a similar picture. Nvidia recorded average daily gains of about 0.66 per cent last month, compared to Google’s stronger 1.42 per cent, an edge that could prove decisive in the short term.
Driving Google’s resurgence is its aggressive push into artificial intelligence across its ecosystem, from search and YouTube to cloud computing. The company has already invested $144 billion in capital expenditure over the past two years and plans to deploy a further $490 billion over the next two.
Its cloud division is also gathering pace. Google Cloud reported an order backlog of nearly $220 billion in the latest quarter, with total backlog touching a record $462 billion, around half of which is expected to be realised within two years. The company’s entry into chip sales is also beginning to factor into its growth narrative.
The last time Google briefly topped the S&P 500 by market value was in February 2016, when it edged past Apple for just two days. This time, the stakes and the numbers are far higher.
At the heart of the contest lies a single force: artificial intelligence. As both companies pour billions into infrastructure, chips and platforms, the leaderboard is no longer just about size, it is about who can scale the future faster.
