In September 2026, Slice raised $100 million at a valuation of roughly $450 million (₹4,300 crore) — a fall of nearly 70% from the $1.3-1.5 billion it commanded as a freshly minted unicorn in 2021-22. Most companies that lose that much value are in trouble. Slice had just closed its best year on record: revenue of ₹1,403 crore (about $146 million) in the year to March 2026, and its first-ever full-year net profit.
The contradiction sits at the centre of the Slice story. A company built to sell credit cards to twenty-somethings got hit by a regulator, merged itself into a small commercial bank in the Northeast, and is now worth a third of what it was — even as its books, for the first time in a decade, actually work. This is how that happened, with the numbers on both sides.
Quick facts
| Company | Slice (legally Slice Small Finance Bank Limited; began as SlicePay) |
| Founded | January 2016 |
| Founder(s) | Rajan Bajaj |
| Businesses | Digital credit cards, unsecured personal loans and MSME lending, plus (since October 2024) savings accounts, fixed deposits and retail banking as a small finance bank |
| Latest FY revenue | ₹1,403 crore ($146 million), FY26 (year to March 2026) |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Net profit of ₹48.4 crore, FY26 — the company’s first full-year profit |
| Listed | Private; not listed on any exchange |
| Market value / last valuation | About $450 million as of a September 2026 funding round, down from a reported peak of $1.3-1.5 billion in 2021-22 |
| Key shareholders / CEO | Rajan Bajaj (founder, MD and CEO); backers include Tiger Global, Insight Partners, Blume Ventures, Neo Group, Kado Global and Moore Strategic Ventures |
What they do
Slice sells credit to people Indian banks have historically found too young, too thin-filed or too much trouble to underwrite. It started as a way for college students and young professionals to split bills into interest-free instalments, moved on to a co-branded prepaid credit card aimed at millennials and Gen Z, and has since become something structurally different: a Reserve Bank of India-licensed small finance bank that can take deposits, issue secured and unsecured loans, and lend to small businesses, built on top of a fintech-style app and underwriting stack. The customer base skews young and digital-first; the products now span a credit card, personal loans, MSME loans and, through its 2024 merger with North East Small Finance Bank (NESFB), ordinary savings accounts and fixed deposits carried over from a Guwahati-based lender with roots across India’s northeastern states.
The origin
Rajan Bajaj studied industrial engineering at IIT Kharagpur and spent about ten months on Flipkart’s product team before leaving in early 2015 to start a company of his own. He grew up in Alwar, Rajasthan, in a family with no business background — his father was an engineer, his mother a teacher — and later said of quitting a stable job that “if I didn’t leave and start then, probably, I would have never done it,” as he told Forbes India in December 2021. There was no single founding insight yet. What came first was a willingness to try several ideas in quick succession until one of them held.
The struggle years
Bajaj’s first company, Mesh, launched in April 2015 as a rental marketplace in Bengaluru — gaming consoles, cameras, bicycles, DVDs. It found early users within two months but ran into a small addressable market, insurance complications on rented goods, and logistics problems that would not go away. He pivoted to car and bike rentals in September 2015, and ran into accident-management headaches specific to two-wheelers and self-drive cars. A general rental marketplace model came next, and lost momentum. A furniture-rental attempt failed too, according to the same Forbes India account.
In December 2015, the company pivoted again, this time to buy-now-pay-later, under the name Buddy. It had to rename itself almost immediately: the State Bank of India already held rights to the “Buddy” trademark, and Buddy became SlicePay. Three years of the BNPL model taught Bajaj its structural flaw: merchants would not pay commissions high enough to fund the product. “By 2018, we realised that BNPL is the worst product experience,” he told Forbes India — a blunt admission from a founder about the model his company had spent three years building. That realisation forced the pivot that actually worked: in 2019, Slice obtained a non-banking financial company (NBFC) licence from the RBI and launched the Slice Super Card, a prepaid credit card issued with Visa and SBM Bank India, aimed squarely at users too young or too new to credit to qualify for a conventional bank card. By mid-2022, at its peak, Slice was issuing more than 300,000 of these cards a month.
The turning point
On 20 June 2022, the RBI issued a directive to all non-bank prepaid payment instrument issuers: PPIs could no longer be loaded through credit lines extended by NBFCs or banks. The rule was aimed squarely at the category of products Slice and several rivals had built — “challenger” credit cards that were, legally, prepaid cards topped up by an NBFC credit line rather than true credit cards. Slice discontinued its prepaid card business to comply. The business that had carried it to unicorn status in November 2021, on a $220 million round co-led by Tiger Global and Insight Partners, was no longer legal to run the way it had been run.
The numbers either side of that circular tell the story. Before it, Slice was valued at more than $1 billion in a round widely reported between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion, riding a fintech-multiple valuation on a card product growing fast. After it, the company spent close to two and a half years rebuilding around a different model entirely — culminating in an October 2023 announcement that Slice would merge with North East Small Finance Bank, an RBI-licensed small finance bank based in Guwahati, gaining CCI approval in March 2024, NCLT approval in August 2024, and completing the merger on 27 October 2024. By September 2026, in a fresh $100 million round led by Neo Group with Kado Global and existing investor Moore Strategic Ventures, the company was valued at about $450 million — investors now benchmarking it against small finance banks and lenders such as HDFC Bank and Nubank rather than against fintech peers, according to reporting on the round. The RBI’s circular did not kill Slice. It ended the version of Slice that was worth $1.5 billion, and replaced it with a bank worth roughly a third of that.
The money behind it
Slice has raised roughly $387 million across more than a dozen rounds since 2016, according to Wikipedia’s compilation of its funding history, with Tiger Global, Insight Partners and Blume Ventures named among its backers. Three moments defined that history. Blume Ventures backed the company in its early NBFC-and-card years, providing the venture credibility that let it recruit and raise further. Tiger Global and Insight Partners co-led the $220 million round in November 2021 that made Slice a unicorn, validating the prepaid-card model just months before regulation dismantled its legal basis — a reminder that a fast round is not the same as a durable one. Most recently, Neo Group, Kado Global and Moore Strategic Ventures backed the September 2026 round at the reduced $450 million valuation, a bet not on a fintech growth story but on a small finance bank that had just turned its first annual profit. Between the 2021 peak and the 2026 round, reporting also noted founder Rajan Bajaj put in personal capital when external fundraising froze in 2023-24 — an unusual signal of a founder underwriting his own company through its hardest stretch.
How it makes money
Before the bank merger, Slice earned money the way most NBFC-backed card and lending fintechs do: interest income on the loans and revolving balances its cards carried, plus fees — processing fees, card and account charges, and internet-handling fees on transactions. In FY23, interest income alone was ₹472 crore, 56% of the company’s ₹847 crore of operating revenue, as it built out an unsecured lending book faster than its risk systems could season it — evident in a loss on financial assets and NPAs that nearly quadrupled that year. The part outsiders got wrong about that model was assuming a “credit card for young people” was primarily a payments business; in practice it was a lending business wearing a card’s interface, and its economics lived or died on how well it underwrote borrowers with thin or no credit history.
Since the NESFB merger, Slice earns money the way a small finance bank does: net interest margin on loans funded partly by low-cost retail deposits rather than only wholesale NBFC borrowing, plus continuing fee income from its card and lending products. That shift shows up starkly in the numbers — revenue actually fell from ₹847 crore in FY23 to ₹604 crore in FY25, even as the underlying loan book grew, because bank-style accounting recognises income differently from an NBFC’s, and because Slice pulled back on the riskiest unsecured originations while it absorbed the merger. The take rate on any individual loan or card is not published, but the direction of travel — a bank funding book growth with deposits instead of only equity and debt — is the single biggest change in how the business earns.
The numbers
Slice’s published financials show a company whose losses first widened sharply as it grew a lending book too fast, then narrowed as it tightened up ahead of the bank merger, then widened again on one-time merger costs, before turning a first profit.
| Fiscal year (₹ crore) | Revenue | Net profit / (loss) |
| FY22 (year to March 2022) | 283 | (254) |
| FY23 (year to March 2023) | 847 | (406) |
| FY25 (year to March 2025) | 604 | (217) |
| FY26 (year to March 2026) | 1,403 | 48.4 |
FY24 is the gap year in the public record: reporting on Slice’s FY25 results states the company’s loss narrowed to ₹153 crore in FY24, ahead of widening again in FY25, but a directly comparable FY24 revenue figure was not available in the same filing summary, so it is left out of the table rather than estimated. In FY23, expenses climbed to ₹1,273 crore against ₹542 crore in FY22, with employee costs nearly tripling to ₹287 crore (including ₹40 crore of ESOP cost) and loss on financial assets and NPAs jumping from ₹58 crore to ₹256 crore — the clearest sign that Slice was originating unsecured credit faster than it could season and collect it. The FY25 widening, by contrast, was attributed by the company to “one-time provisions and higher operating expenses incurred ahead of the scheme of arrangement” with NESFB, not to fresh credit losses. FY26’s swing to profit came with revenue up 132% year on year, a net worth of ₹875.3 crore, a capital-to-risk-weighted-assets ratio of 19.1%, and a debt-to-equity ratio that improved from 0.97 in FY25 to 0.14 in FY26 as deposits and equity capital replaced wholesale borrowing on the balance sheet.
Where the money comes from
As of 30 September 2025, digital unsecured personal loans made up about 76% of Slice’s on-book assets, MSME loans roughly 14%, and the remainder — direct assignment, business-correspondent partnerships and term loans — around 9%. The surprise in that split is how little of the balance sheet, even after becoming a bank, is behind secured or small-business lending; the bulk of the risk still sits in unsecured consumer credit, the same category the RBI’s 2022 circular was aimed at curbing when it ran through NBFC credit lines rather than bank balance sheets. Geographically, the bank inherited NESFB’s branch network and deposit base across India’s northeastern states and West Bengal, while Slice’s own card and lending customers are concentrated in urban, digitally active markets elsewhere in India — a company now running two customer bases with different risk profiles and different acquisition costs under one banking licence.
The risks
The first risk is legacy credit quality. Gross non-performing assets stood at 5.8% as of 30 September 2025, down from 6.3% at the end of March 2025, with net NPAs at 4.2%, down from 4.7%. Slice itself has said the majority of that NPA stock sits in the legacy unsecured portfolio built during the fast-growth, pre-regulation years and will “run down over time” — a bet that time and provisioning, not fresh underwriting discipline alone, will clean up the book.
The second risk is that FY26’s profit is one data point, not a trend. A single profitable year followed a year in which the loss widened specifically because of one-time merger costs; strip those out and the underlying run-rate of the business is younger than the headline suggests, and the September 2026 round’s near-70% valuation cut from 2021-22 peak levels reflects investors pricing that uncertainty rather than dismissing the business outright.
The third risk is concentration risk cutting two ways. On one side, roughly three-quarters of the loan book is unsecured consumer credit, a category that is disproportionately exposed to any future regulatory tightening of the kind that hit the business in 2022. On the other, the deposit franchise Slice inherited is rooted in the Northeast, a smaller, less liquid deposit market than the metro markets a bank of Slice’s ambitions would eventually need to draw from at scale.
The takeaway
Slice’s history argues against treating a valuation as a verdict on a business. The company was worth more as an unregulated-adjacent card fintech riding a growth multiple than it is today as a licensed, profitable, deposit-taking bank — because the market that was pricing it changed from a fintech multiple to a banking one the moment its business model did. A founder who pivoted through five failed rental ideas before landing on lending was arguably more prepared than most for the RBI’s 2022 circular to force a sixth pivot, this time into becoming a regulated bank rather than around one. The lesson for anyone building in a lightly regulated corner of financial services: the multiple the market pays you is a function of the rules you are operating under, and those rules are not fixed. Building for a regime that might not survive contact with the regulator is building on borrowed time.
Frequently asked questions
What does Slice do now?
Slice is now Slice Small Finance Bank, an RBI-licensed bank formed by merging the fintech Slice with North East Small Finance Bank in October 2024. It offers credit cards, unsecured personal loans and MSME loans alongside savings accounts and fixed deposits.
Why did Slice’s valuation fall so sharply?
Slice was valued at $1.3-1.5 billion in 2021-22 as a fast-growing card fintech. After the RBI’s June 2022 circular forced it to discontinue its prepaid-card model, it rebuilt around a bank merger; by September 2026, a fresh funding round valued it at about $450 million, with investors now applying banking-style valuation metrics rather than fintech growth multiples.
Has Slice ever been profitable?
Yes, for the first time in FY26 (year to March 2026), when it reported a net profit of ₹48.4 crore on revenue of ₹1,403 crore, after net losses in each prior disclosed fiscal year going back to at least FY22.
Who founded Slice and when?
Rajan Bajaj founded the company in January 2016 as SlicePay, after several earlier, unsuccessful ventures including a rental marketplace called Mesh.
What caused Slice’s near-death moment?
The RBI’s 20 June 2022 directive barring non-bank prepaid payment instrument issuers from loading cards through credit lines forced Slice to discontinue the prepaid credit card business that had made it a unicorn seven months earlier.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Forbes India, “Slam Dunk: Can Rajan Bajaj grab a big slice of the fintech pie?”, December 2021
- TechCrunch, “India’s Slice becomes unicorn with $220M funding from Tiger Global, Insight Partners and Advent”, November 2021
- PYMNTS, “RBI to FinTechs: Non-Banks Can’t Reload Funds to Prepaid Wallets, Cards”, June 2022
- Cashfree, “Policy Radar: RBI bans loading PPIs via credit lines”, July 2022
- Entrackr, “Despite RBI crackdown, Slice income grows 3X to Rs 847 Cr in FY23”, January 2024
- YourStory, “Fintech startup slice, North East Small Finance Bank complete merger”, October 2024
- Entrackr, “Slice completes merger with North East Small Finance Bank”, October 2024
- PR Newswire, “slice and North East Small Finance Bank Announce Successful Completion of the Merger”, October 2024
- Head&Tale, “Slice Small Finance Bank FY25 losses widen to Rs 217 crore”, November 2025
- Entrackr, “slice reports profitability in first full year as bank; revenue jumps 2.3X in FY26”, May 2026
- Business Standard, “Slice Small Finance Bank posts first-ever Rs 48.4 crore net profit in FY26”, May 2026
- Open The Magazine, “Slice Valuation Crash: Fintech Unicorn’s Value Plunges Nearly 70% in $100 Million Down Round”, September 2026
- Dealroom, “Slice raises $100M at $450M valuation, betting on banking pivot”, September 2026
- Wikipedia, “Slice Small Finance Bank”, accessed September 2026
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