By Pratik Bhakta

Copyright indiatimes

UK-headquartered fintech startup Tide, which has around half of its customer base in India, has secured $120 million in a fresh funding round led by global alternative asset management company TPG, with existing investor Apax, another global private equity firm, also participating.The round has valued Tide at around $1.5 billion, said Oliver Prill, the company’s chief executive officer. This is a major valuation bump up for the 2017-founded startup. It had last raised a major equity funding round in 2021, from Apax, when it was valued at around $650 million, data from Tracxn shows.The British fintech firm, which focuses on providing financial services such as payments, credit and insurance to small and medium enterprises, has a sizable presence in India.“Out of the 1.6 million customers that Tide has globally, we have around 800,000 in India, which is even larger than the UK. Around 50% of our employees are based in India,” Prill said.Tide plans to invest the fresh funds in expanding its business operations in India and continental Europe, including Germany and France, where its products have been launched. It will also invest in strengthening the product while investing in artificial intelligence to power its systems.“This round is a mix of primary and secondary capital, with the secondary component aimed at giving some liquidity to our employees and some of our early investors,” Prill added. He did not reveal the exact split between the two components.In secondary funding, existing investors take the funds and sell their shares — the money does not go to the company.While Tide’s UK business is profitable, Prill added that the company is investing heavily in its newer markets, resulting in losses at the overall level.Speaking about the India business, Gurjodhpal Singh, the country CEO of Tide, said the company is investing in expanding its presence here, bringing small businesses into formal financing.While the company does not have any regulatory licence here, it offers payments, savings, credit intermediation and also distributes insurance products as a sourcing channel. For credit distribution, Tide works with around 25 non-banking lenders offering working capital to small businesses. Its other credit products include loans against property, securities and personal loans. “We are still evaluating which licence we will seek from the RBI. Even in the UK, we have not gone after a banking licence, but we are evaluating in India,” Singh said. British fintech Revolut, which also has a presence in India, has adopted the opposite strategy. In the UK it got a banking licence in 2024 and in India it secured a prepaid payments instrument licence in April 2025. In India, Tide caters to sole proprietors, artisans, freelancers, small retailers and others, primarily operating with a team size of anywhere between zero to nine people.