Startups & Funding
Sachin Bansal's Navi raises first outside capital, $100M from Prosus
Indian fintech Navi has raised $100 million from Prosus, the first institutional funding for the eight-year-old startup founded by Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal.
The investment, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, values Navi at about $1.3 billion. That’s below the roughly $2 billion valuation the Bengaluru-based startup had sought from institutional investors in 2024.
Bansal founded Navi in 2018 after leaving Flipkart following its sale to Walmart, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money into the venture. The fintech offers digital payments, lending, insurance, and mutual funds, and Bansal has said he wants to eventually build it into a bank. He had co-founded Flipkart with Binny Bansal in 2007 and helped grow it into India’s leading e-commerce company before selling his stake in 2018, shortly before Walmart closed its $16 billion deal for a majority stake in the firm.
The Prosus round comes as Navi is reportedly preparing to go public, aiming to raise ₹30 billion (about $314 million) in an IPO. The startup had originally filed for a $440 million IPO in 2022 but abandoned the plan the following year as the IPO market slumped.
Navi’s financials show a company still working toward sustained profitability at scale. In the financial year ended March 2026, it reported revenue of ₹30.91 billion (about $323.33 million), while its net loss grew to ₹4.66 billion (around $48.74 million). The startup says it reached consolidated profitability in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026.
On the product side, Navi’s app — which runs on India’s government-backed Unified Payments Interface — is the country’s fourth-largest UPI app, trailing Walmart-owned PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm.
Bansal called the Prosus investment a “strong endorsement” of the institution Navi is building, adding that the startup valued the investor’s global perspective and experience scaling technology businesses. He did not respond to a request for comment on the valuation.
Why it matters
A down-round-adjacent valuation for a well-known founder’s fintech, arriving just as it prepares an IPO, is a signal for how institutional investors are pricing consumer fintech in India even as the company pushes toward the public markets.