Ashneer Grover Launches Fund My Staff - An Employer-Backed Lending Platform to Bring Formal Credit to India's Underserved Workers

Ashneer Grover, former MD and co-founder of BharatPe, has launched Fund My Staff - a new fintech platform that enables employers to facilitate loans for their employees by acting as guarantors. The announcement was made through a LinkedIn post on Thursday, marking Grover's latest move in the digital lending space since his departure from BharatPe.

How It Works

Rather than companies lending directly to staff, employers act as guarantors for loans that are originated and disbursed by RBI-regulated lending institutions. Employers can onboard employees, set the maximum loan amount they are eligible for, review loan requests, and choose whether to provide a guarantee. Employees can also initiate loan requests directly through the platform.

Approved loans are disbursed by RBI-registered lending partners, while borrowers repay through monthly EMIs over a chosen tenure. Fund My Staff operates as a Lending Service Provider under the RBI's digital lending guidelines. The platform has identified Ash Grove Capital Private Limited, an RBI-registered NBFC, as its lending partner.

Who It Targets

The platform is designed for workers with limited or no credit history who often struggle to secure formal loans from banks and digital lending platforms. By leveraging employer relationships, Fund My Staff aims to reduce lending risk for financial institutions while helping workers access formal credit more easily.

Behind the Platform

Fund My Staff is operated by New Delhi-based Third Unicorn Private Limited, founded by Ashneer Grover, Madhuri Jain Grover, and Aseem Ghavri. Third Unicorn also operates ZeroPe, a healthcare financing platform enabling users to pay hospital bills through instant medical loans. The company previously launched CrickPe, a fantasy cricket platform that ceased operations in early 2025.

The Bigger Bet

India's credit market remains deeply underserved at the small-ticket, low-formality end. Millions of formal-sector employees at small businesses have payslips but no credit history - making them effectively invisible to most digital lenders. Fund My Staff's employer-guarantee model converts existing trust relationships in the workplace into a credit underwriting signal - a structurally different approach from pure unsecured lending, and one that could scale significantly if employer adoption proves strong.

For Grover, it is a disciplined doubling down on financial inclusion - the same thesis that powered BharatPe's merchant payment and lending business, now applied to the employee side of India's vast informal credit gap.