Lizzie Chapman and Ashish Anantharaman, founders of the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) firm ZestMoney, have launched a new start-up named SwiffyLabs.

This B2B fintech company will focus on building infrastructure for banks and financial institutions, according to a report by Business Standard. Sources told the media company that Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, is backing this venture.  

The primary objective of the new venture is to assist financial institutions in introducing modern products like embedded finance and invoice financing. The start-up aims to leverage advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and digital public infrastructure (DPI) to achieve these goals.  

The development comes about a month after the beleaguered ZestMoney shut down its operations. This came in the wake of unsuccessful attempts by its new management to revive the business even as questions about regulatory discrepancies at the company were doing the rounds. Chapman and Anantharaman departed from ZestMoney in May 2023 after acquisition discussions with fintech major PhonePe since March last year failed.  

The Economic Times reported that two prominent financial entities, previously backing ZestMoney, withdrew their credit lines last week. This move was attributed to regulatory constraints on unsecured lending imposed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in November. 

In another development reported by ET, non-banking companies DMI Finance and Aditya Birla Finance, which have been partners of ZestMoney, are in talks to acquire the company. The report added that discussions are underway, and finalization is anticipated soon, citing the people aware of the development. 

ZestMoney had raised approximately $140 million from investors such as Omidyar Network, Prosus, Quona Zip, Ribbit Capital, and Goldman Sachs, among others. It had a customer base of 1.7 crore, disbursing loans amounting to around Rs 400 crore every month. It was collaborating with 27 distinct lenders and partnered with 10 thousand online brands and 75 thousand offline stores.