Fintech startup Tortoise raises $2.3 million in funding led by Vertex Ventures

Bengaluru: Fintech startup Tortoise has raised $2.3 million in a seed funding round led by Vertex Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings.

This is Tortoise's second round of funding in the last 12 months. The startup has raised a total of $3 million to date.

Better Capital, Cloud Capital, and other operators like Kunal Shah, founder of Cred; Neeraj Arora, former chief business officer of Whatsapp; Ankur Nagpal, founder of edtech firm Teachable; and Ganesh Rengaswamy, cofounder of Quona Capital also participated in the round.


The startup plans to partner with more brands and merchants to provide wider options for customers to save up and make ‘save now, buy later’ a viable option for better returns instead of the ‘buy now, pay later’ model, the company said in a prepared statement on Monday.

Tortoise was founded in 2021 by Vardhan Koshal and Surya Harsha Nunnaguppala.

The fintech firm allows users to save up for large purchases. Tortoise offers weekly and monthly savings plans ranging from a few months to a year. Users can make little deposits over several weeks or months and then reap the benefits all at once.

The adoption and use of product offerings of Tortoise are fast-growing in the global market, but the industry in India is still in its early stages.

In January of 2022, New York-based fintech startup Accrue Savings which operates in the same space as Tortoise, raised $25 million in a fundraising round led by Tiger Global Management.