Startup Deep Dive : Grip Invest — how a 2022 SEBI rule turned a leasing startup into a bond broker

Grip Invest has crossed ₹1,000 crore (~$104 million) in assets under management, just a few years after two former Morgan Stanley and Chalo colleagues started pitching leased forklifts to their friends and family for ₹20,000 a ticket. The stranger part is what that money now buys: the product Grip built its name on, fractional leasing, is no longer what it primarily runs on. Today the company operates as a SEBI-registered stockbroker in the debt segment, and it got there only because a 2022 regulatory rewrite gave it no other legal way to keep selling what it was selling.

That regulatory pivot, and not any single funding round, is the hinge on which Grip Invest’s growth turns. This deep dive traces the platform from a word-of-mouth leasing marketplace started in the first Covid-19 lockdown year to a licensed Online Bond Platform Provider (OBPP) distributing corporate bonds, securitised debt instruments and fixed deposits to more than half a million registered users — and asks how a company that still won’t disclose its own valuation earns its money.

Quick facts

What they do

Grip Invest is a Gurugram-based online investment platform, regulated by SEBI as an Online Bond Platform Provider, that lets Indian retail investors put money into fixed-income products most of them could never access directly: listed corporate bonds, securitised debt instruments (SDIs) built around leased equipment, invoices and loans (branded LeaseX, InvoiceX and LoanX), high-yield fixed deposits sourced from NBFCs, and theme-based “Baskets” that bundle several of these into one portfolio. Minimum tickets have historically started around ₹20,000 (2021, company-stated), and the platform currently advertises regulated fixed returns of roughly 10–14% and returns of up to 16–17% on its SDI products (Grip Invest, company website, 2026). The pitch has stayed consistent since launch: fixed-income yields that beat a bank deposit, sold in denominations a private wealth desk would never quote to a retail client.

The origin

Nikhil Aggarwal spent six years, from 2010 to 2016, as a vice-president at Morgan Stanley before leaving investment banking altogether. From 2016 to 2019 he was co-founder and chief operating officer of Chalo, the public-transport technology company, and then took a short detour consulting for the World Bank’s transport practice. None of that was fixed income. What became Grip Invest, which he founded with Vivek Gulati and Aashish Jindal in 2020, grew out of watching two unrelated trends collide: Indian retail investors had almost nowhere to put money beyond equities, mutual funds and bank deposits, while a wave of asset-light companies — logistics operators, warehousing firms, EV fleets — needed financing for the vehicles, servers and furniture they used without wanting to own them outright. Grip’s first product connected the two directly: it packaged leased equipment into individual special-purpose vehicles and sold fractional shares of the lease income to retail investors, an asset class that, as the founders told interviewers at the time, had simply never been offered to individuals in India before.

The struggle years

Grip did not open to institutional money or public trust. Aggarwal and his co-founders put in roughly ₹15 lakh of personal capital before any outside investor signed on, and the first sales pitches went out to a list of 60–70 personal contacts — friends, family and former colleagues being asked to hand over money for an asset class that did not exist as a retail product in India (StartupTalky, November 2021). The first 100 customers came entirely through word of mouth, and the company has since acknowledged that convincing anyone to invest in a leased forklift or delivery van through a fully online platform, with no branch, no relationship manager and no deposit insurance, was the harder sale than building the technology itself.

The second, more structural threat arrived in November 2022, when the Securities and Exchange Board of India introduced a binding regulatory framework for platforms distributing bonds and securitised debt instruments to retail investors, requiring every such platform to register as an Online Bond Platform Provider (cxotoday, 2023). For close to a year, Grip was running a leasing and SDI marketplace under the older, looser rules while the new licensing regime it would have to qualify under was still being finalised — with no guarantee its existing business could simply continue once the rules landed. Qualifying meant setting up a separate SEBI-registered stockbroking subsidiary, Grip Broking Private Limited, and securing NSE membership in the debt segment, work that was not complete until September 2023.

The turning point

The turning point was that September 2023 licence itself. Before it, Grip described its scale in terms of “investment opportunities enabled” — about ₹750 crore worth, across more than 300,000 registered investors, as of the licence announcement (cxotoday, September 2023). The OBPP registration, under SEBI registration number INZ000312836 and NSE member code 90319, did something a leasing marketplace alone could not: it let Grip legally distribute listed corporate bonds and government securities (SGBs, G-Secs) alongside its original SDI products, widening the shelf from one asset class to several regulated ones at once. Measured against where the platform stands now — assets under management that have crossed ₹1,000 crore and a registered base above 5 lakh investors, by Grip’s own current account of its business (Grip Invest, company website, 2026) — the licence marks the point where Grip stopped being a leasing-only marketplace and became a multi-product bond distributor that happens to still sell leases.

The money behind it

• Total raised: more than $16 million (roughly ₹137 crore) across ten rounds since 2020, per aggregated funding data (Inc42; Clay, 2026).
• Anicut Capital led Grip’s seed round in November 2020, the first institutional capital after the founders’ own money and personal-network cheques (Inc42, 2026).
• Venture Highway and Endiya Partners co-led a $3 million Series A in August 2021, the round that took Grip from a founder-funded pilot to a company that could hire beyond its original team (Inc42; StartupTalky, 2026/2021).
• Stride Ventures led a $10 million round in January 2024 — $8.5 million in equity and convertible notes plus $1.5 million in venture debt — alongside continuing investors LC Nueva, Multiply Ventures, Venture Highway, Anicut Capital and AdvantEdge (Indian Startup News, January 2024).
• Valuation: undisclosed at every round on record, including the January 2024 raise (Inc42; Indian Startup News, 2024/2026) — unusual for a startup four rounds and six years into its life, and one reason this piece does not carry a headline valuation figure.

How it makes money

• Origination commission: Grip has said it earns roughly 1–2% in commission from both the investor side and the corporate lessee or issuer side on leasing and SDI deals it originates (StartupTalky, November 2021).
• Equipment-sourcing margin: a further 1–3% has come from OEM discounts captured when Grip sources the physical assets — vehicles, servers, furniture — that underlie its leasing products (StartupTalky, November 2021).
• Broking and distribution commission: since the September 2023 OBPP licence, Grip Broking earns distribution commission on corporate bonds and government securities placed through its NSE debt-segment membership (cxotoday, 2023).
• Product shelf that generates the revenue above: corporate bonds; securitised debt instruments (LeaseX, InvoiceX, LoanX); high-yield fixed deposits; and multi-asset “Baskets” (Grip Invest, company website, 2026).
• What people get wrong: none of this is a bank deposit. Grip is a distributor and originator, not a lender of its own balance sheet — the credit risk on a bond, invoice or lease sits with the investor who bought it, not with Grip, regardless of the return advertised.

The numbers

Grip does not publish audited profit-or-loss figures, and the only revenue figure on the public record comes from filings-based data compiled by Inc42. Rather than fill in years that are not disclosed, here is the growth trail that is actually documented, unit-labelled where relevant:

Two things stand out. First, the investor count and AUM figures are internally consistent across four independent snapshots taken over five years, which is the kind of steady compounding that is hard to fake. Second, revenue growth (FY25 up 87.2% year-on-year) is running well ahead of the pace at which Grip discloses profitability — it has never published a net profit or loss figure, on filings or otherwise, that this piece could verify.

Where the money comes from

• Corporate bonds and government securities: distributed since the September 2023 OBPP licence; advertised regulated fixed returns of roughly 10–14% (Grip Invest, company website, 2026).
• Securitised debt instruments — LeaseX, InvoiceX, LoanX: Grip’s original product line, built on leased equipment, invoice receivables and loan receivables; advertised returns up to 16–17% (Grip Invest, company website, 2026).
• High-yield fixed deposits: sourced from NBFC partners and distributed on the platform (Grip Invest, company website, 2026).
• Baskets: curated, theme-based portfolios that combine the above into a single diversified product (Grip Invest, company website, 2026).

The surprise is not a geography split — Grip operates only in India — but a product-mix one. The company built its early identity, and most of its founding-story coverage, on fractional leasing of physical assets. Yet the growth that took it from ₹750 crore in enabled investments (September 2023) to more than ₹1,000 crore in AUM (2026) tracks almost exactly the period after it became a licensed bond broker, not the period when leasing was its only product. The asset class Grip is least known for outside its own marketing — plain corporate bonds — is now central to how it operates.

The risks

• Credit and default risk: corporate bonds, leases, invoices and loans distributed on the platform are not capital-protected the way a bank fixed deposit is. Grip structures each leasing deal through an individual special-purpose vehicle to isolate asset-level risk, but the lessee or issuer’s ability to pay still sits with the investor, not with Grip.
• Liquidity and secondary-market risk: bonds and SDIs placed through the OBPP/NSE debt-segment route trade over a request-for-quote (RFQ) mechanism that Grip itself runs investor guidance on; RFQ markets for smaller, less liquid corporate paper can leave an investor unable to exit a position before maturity at a fair price.
• Regulatory risk: the SEBI framework governing OBPPs and SDIs is still comparatively new — it forced Grip into one costly restructuring already, between November 2022 and September 2023 — and further tightening (on minimum ticket sizes, disclosure or product design) could raise compliance costs or narrow what the platform is allowed to sell.

The takeaway

The lesson in Grip Invest’s story is not about leasing, or bonds, or even fintech distribution — it is about timing a regulator instead of resisting one. A less-noticed startup might have treated SEBI’s November 2022 OBPP framework as a threat to be lobbied against or slow-walked; Grip instead spent roughly ten months building the compliance infrastructure — a licensed broking subsidiary, NSE membership, a new registration number — to operate squarely inside it. The AUM growth that followed came not despite the new rules but because of the credibility they conferred. For a founder building anything in Indian fintech, where the regulatory perimeter keeps expanding, the transferable point is blunt: get licensed for the business you are about to become, not just the one you already are.

Frequently asked questions

What is Grip Invest?

Grip Invest is a Gurugram-based, SEBI-registered Online Bond Platform Provider that lets Indian retail investors buy corporate bonds, securitised debt instruments (LeaseX, InvoiceX, LoanX), high-yield fixed deposits and multi-asset “Baskets” through a single online platform.

Is Grip Invest regulated and safe?

Grip operates under SEBI registration number INZ000312836 through its broking subsidiary, Grip Broking Private Limited, and is a member of the NSE debt segment (code 90319). Regulation covers how the platform and its products are structured and disclosed; it does not make the underlying bonds, leases or invoices capital-protected the way a bank deposit is.

Who founded Grip Invest, and when?

Grip Invest was founded in 2020 by Nikhil Aggarwal, a former Morgan Stanley banker and Chalo co-founder, along with Vivek Gulati and Aashish Jindal.

How much has Grip Invest raised, and what is it worth?

Grip has raised more than $16 million across roughly ten rounds since 2020, led at various stages by Anicut Capital, Venture Highway, Endiya Partners and Stride Ventures. The company has not disclosed a valuation at any round, including its $10 million raise in January 2024.

What returns does Grip Invest offer, and is Grip Invest profitable?

Grip’s own site advertises regulated fixed returns of roughly 10–14% and returns of up to 16–17% on its SDI products, though none of these are capital-protected. On profitability, Grip reported FY25 revenue of ₹12.1 crore, up 87.2% year-on-year, but has not publicly disclosed a net profit or loss figure.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• StartupTalky, “Investing in physical assets is now easy with Grip Invest!”, November 2021
• cxotoday, “Grip Secures SEBI’s Online Bond Platform Provider (OBPP) Licence from NSE”, September 2023
• Indian Startup News, “Grip Invest, an alternative investment platform, raises $10M in equity and debt financing”, January 2024
• Inc42, “Grip Invest Funding 2026 – Total Funding, Rounds & Investors”, accessed September 2026
• Clay, “How Much Did Grip Invest Raise? Funding & Key Investors”, accessed September 2026
• Grip Invest, company website (gripinvest.in/about-us), accessed September 2026
• Founder Thesis, “Disintermediating Banks: Grip Invest”, accessed September 2026

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