Fintech startup Tortoise, a platform that rewards consumers to save up for their  purchases,  has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Sriharsha Majety co-founder / CEO of  Swiggy) and Lizzie Chapman,  co-founder / CEO of Fintech ZestMoney in a mentors round.

Lizzie Chapman, co-founder of ZestMoney, said:  "I am elated to be supporting a founder that's emerging from the ZestMoney family. I wish Nikhil and the team at Tortoise the very best as they take a complementary path to Zest towards making life more affordable for Indians"

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

The current round is an extension of the seed funding round and is being referred to as a “mentors round” as the startup gets two very well-regarded founders as investors to help Tortoise strategise a faster growth plan.

On the new funding, Vardhan Koshal, co-founder of Tortoise said, “This round is our Mentors Round, where we are raising Angel cheques from category-defining leaders like Lizzie and Sriharsha and expect a few more such visionaries to join in. We are well capitalized from our Seed round, and hence this is less about the investment and more about access to such inspirational leaders.”

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

Tortoise allows users to save up 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 ranging 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 those to buy the product with assured cashback up to Rs 10,000.   

Compared to other consumer-focused Fintechs, Tortoise is a B2B2C platform that also helps brands and merchants in increasing 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 that “consumerism in India is on the rise and so is the aspiration among consumers to upgrade their lifestyles. However, not all consumers want to or have the capability to pay upfront for large ticket purchases. Besides this, over 93 per cent of Indians do not have access to formal credit and in such scenarios, SNBL is the best alternative.”           

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