Fintech VC keeps backing deals
Collide Capital closed a $95 million second fund to back fintech and future-of-work startups, signaling continued targeted VC interest despite tighter markets. At the same time, Indian fintechs raised roughly $315.9 million across 16 deals in March, showing active deal flow in lending, EV financing and AI solutions. (techcrunch.com, bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com)
A venture firm that started in 2021 just took 13 months to raise a new $95 million fund for fintech and work software, even after two years of tighter startup markets. Collide Capital says it now manages more than $170 million and has already backed 75 companies. (techcrunch.com, finance.yahoo.com) That is the part worth noticing: money is still showing up, but it is showing up for narrower bets. PitchBook says global fintech venture funding reached $42.8 billion in 2025, the highest since 2022, while deal counts stayed much lower than the boom years. (pitchbook.com, pitchbook.brightspotcdn.com) Another data point landed the same week from India, where fintech startups raised about $315.9 million across 16 March deals, according to ET BFSI’s roundup of 1Lattice data. The money went into affordable housing finance, electric vehicle financing, supply-chain credit, employee benefits, small-business lending, and artificial-intelligence fraud tools. (bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com) The biggest Indian round came from Weaver, an affordable housing finance company, which raised $170 million from Peak XV Partners, Z47, RTP Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Fundamentum. That single deal accounted for more than half of the month’s total. (bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com) This is what the market looks like now: fewer checks, but bigger ones for companies that sit close to real cash flow. CB Insights said 29 mega-rounds made up 63% of fourth-quarter fintech funding in 2025, while early-stage deal share fell to a multi-year low. (cbinsights.com) Crunchbase saw the same pattern at the start of 2026. Its first-quarter data showed fintech funding up year over year, but concentrated in far fewer companies. (news.crunchbase.com) Collide is positioning itself inside that gap between broad enthusiasm and selective conviction. TechCrunch reports the firm focuses on early-stage startups in fintech, supply chain, and the future of work, which lets it hunt for younger companies while larger funds keep crowding into later-stage winners. (techcrunch.com) The India numbers show why investors still bother. Lending for homes, vehicles, and small businesses produces visible demand in a country where digital payments are widespread but credit access is still uneven, so startups can plug into real financial bottlenecks instead of chasing abstract growth. (bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com) So the headline is not that fintech venture capital is “back” in the old 2021 sense. The headline is that investors are still writing checks when a firm or startup can point to a specific lane, a specific customer problem, and numbers big enough to survive a market that is no longer paying for vibes. (techcrunch.com, cbinsights.com, news.crunchbase.com)
