Fintech startup Tortoise raises funds from Swiggy, ZestMoney

Lizzie Chapman, co-founder of ZestMoney, said: “I’m thrilled to support a founder emerging from the ZestMoney family. I wish Nikhil and the team at Tortoise the very best as they take a complementary path to Zest to make life more affordable for Indians.

The startup Save Now Buy Later (SNBL) had earlier this year raised around $2.3 million in a seed round of funding from Vertex Ventures, part of the global investment company Temasek.

The current round is an extension of the seed funding round and is referred to as a “mentor round” as the startup gets two highly regarded founders as investors to help Tortoise strategize for a faster growth plan.

Commenting on the new funding, Vardhan Koshal, co-founder of Tortoise, said, “This round is our mentor round, where we are raising angel checks from category-defining leaders like Lizzie and Sriharsha and expect a few more such visionaries to join. We are well capitalized from our Seed round , and therefore this is less about the investment and more about access to such inspiring leaders.”

Tortoise was co-founded in 2020 by Vardhan Koshal and Surya Harsha Nunnaguppala. Recently, Nikhil Joy, former Vice President of ZestMoney, joined the Tortoise team as a co-founder. Joy is a fintech product manager and was responsible for driving product and growth at the consumer loan company until recently.

Tortoise allows users to save for large purchases and rewards them for those savings. The savings plan, inspired by Tanishq’s Golden Harvest Scheme, offers weekly and monthly savings plans from a few months to a year.

In this concept, consumers can make small deposits over a few months to a year for a particular product on the Tortoise app and then use them to purchase the product with guaranteed cashbacks of up to ₹10,000.

Compared to other consumer-focused fintechs, Tortoise is a B2B2C platform that also helps brands and merchants increase their sales. Tortoise offers a one-stop solution for brands to offer savings schemes to their respective customers that not only drive sales but also improve repeat purchases.

Vardhan said, “Consumerism in India is on the rise and so is the aspiration among consumers to upgrade their lifestyles. However, not all consumers are willing or able to pay upfront for big ticket purchases. In addition to this, over 93 percent of Indians do not have access to formal credit and in such scenarios SNBL is the best option.”

SNBL is gaining more and more importance not only in India, but also in the western markets such as the USA and the UK.

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