When Flipkart was taken over by US retail giant- Walmart, the landscape of Indian technology startups changed rapidly. Inspired by the super success of E-commerce retailers, many of the former 'Flipkartians' ventured for their own story in the budding industry of the country. An alumni of IIT Bombay (now Mumbai), Lalit Keshre decided to take the entrepreneurial plunge. He was associated with Flipkart as its Group Product Manager. At that point, the domestic startup industry was mainly focused on e-commerce, retailing, cab aggregators and food delivery. Financial services was an old school segment back then. Lalit, along with his former colleagues Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal, started working on building products for the financial sector that would "change the thought process in the industry". They stepped in an industry which was highly underserved and if tapped rightly, could result in exponential growth. Back then, about 200 million Indians fell in the bracket of investable income, while only 10% of them invested. The only to bring the remaining 90% on board was by making investing simpler and convenient. There was no looking back since then. This bond had sowed the seeds for 'Groww', which later on grew significantly. They thought of launching a savings product for millennials, which was initially designed as an internet financial services company and with the best user experience. Bengaluru headquartered Groww is an investment platform that offers a new way of investing money with stockbroking and direct mutual funds, which was officially launched in 2017. The platform provides complete insights about mutual funds, systematic investment planning, equity-linked savings, and everything from the personal finance world, which helps new investors make investing simple by maintaining a simplified user interface to make investing easy, accessible, hassle-free, transparent and paperless. 2016 is marked as the year of Demonetization, which opened the doors for the digital economy. Flooded with 'UPI' led transactions, financial applications like Groww shifted the bar to multilevel high in how Indians were handling their wealth. Customers can also invest in Domestic equities, stocks, IPO, gold and other financial instruments through the Groww platform. This strategy helped the entity to scale up the customer base to the older generation, which is more inclined towards the precious metal and other fixed income avenues. Today, over 150 million across 900 cities Indian Groww users invest in Stocks, IPOs, ETFs, digital gold and mutual funds in quick succession, to satisfy their financial appetite. Groww focused on simplicity and transparency, and has been designed as an advisor or ‘buddy’. Its platform is powered by intelligent UI and UX. The app has thumped well for the safety and security of the customers and financial transactions. The initial Journey Groww initially started as a mutual fund distribution platform and offered only three mutual funds on its website. Along with these three mutual funds, Groww also offered various services like Robo Advisory, risk analysis, and customer profiling, which were later dropped. Now, over three dozen mutual funds have partnered with Groww, offering over 6,000 schemes for investors. As the platform got older, it started gaining more interactions with users.  It started offering zero commission mutual funds and enabled stock trading. Fundraising Groww is recently elevated to the status of an 'Unicorn', adding another feather in its crown. A startup with valuation over $1 billions is known as an 'Unicorn'. Groww touched the feat in May 2021, when it recently raised $83 million in the round led by Tiger Global, valuing it over a billion dollars. Its valuation has jumped fourfold in just seven months. In January 2019, Groww raised $6.2 million by Sequoia India. American seed accelerator Y Combinator, Propel Venture Partners and Kauffman Fellows also participated in the investment round. The company had earlier raised $1.2 million from Insignia Venture Partners, America’s Lightbridge Partners and Kairos fund. Groww had raised seed funding from CureFit founders Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori with Y Combinator in January 2018. In September 2019, the company raised $21.4m US-based VC firm Ribbit Capital. The round also saw participation from existing investors Sequoia India and Y Combinator. In the same month and year later, Groww raised $30m from YC Continuity. The round also saw participation from existing investors Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital and Propel Ventures. Competitors Groww competes with Zerodha, Upstox, IndMoney and Paytm Money. While Zerodha has a pole position in the stock trading space followed by Upstox, there are multiple players who have been fighting it out for a dominant market share in the space of mutual funds and SIPs. Such platforms include ETMONEY and Cube Wealth. Mergers and Acquisitions Groww recently acquired the mutual funds business of Indiabulls Housing Finance, by taking over its subsidiaries Indiabulls Asset Management Company (IAMCL) and Indiabulls Trustee Company, the trustee of IAMCL for Rs 175 crore. SEBI recently allowed fintech companies to facilitate innovation, and increase investors' reach with technology-based offerings. Indiabulls MF has assets under management of Rs 66,369 crore as of March -end. The way ahead Groww is likely to launch deposits, US Stocks, Sovereign Gold Bonds and other derivatives products in months to come. Financial education content has been a key focus area for Groww since its inception. The company plans to launch a slew of financial education initiatives aimed at millenials and expand the financial services market.