Gaurav Mathur & SafeGold: The Investor's Playbook for Building a Profitable ₹6100 Crore Fintech
An exclusive deep dive into Gaurav Mathur, the founder of SafeGold. Discover how this ex-PE investor built a profitable digital gold empire on just $2.4M.
Gaurav Mathur, the founder and Managing Director of SafeGold, has achieved something of a rarity in the Indian startup ecosystem: massive scale combined with profitability. His company, the foundational infrastructure powering India's digital gold market, is on track to clock over ₹6,100 crores ($730M+) in revenue this year, having reached this scale with a remarkably lean $2.4 million in total funding. This is not a story of cash-burning growth but one of strategic precision, capital efficiency, and deep market insight.
In a candid conversation on the Founder Thesis podcast, Gaurav Mathur sat down with host Akshay Datt to deconstruct his entire journey—from the crucibles of global private equity to the operational trenches of building a category-defining fintech. This dossier synthesizes that conversation and other research to present the definitive profile of the founder and the company architecting India's digital gold future.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
The Making of a Founder: Forged in Finance
Gaurav Mathur's path to entrepreneurship was not a typical one. It was forged over 15 years in the high-stakes worlds of investment banking and private equity, a background that gave him what he calls an "unfair advantage" as an operator.
His journey began after an Economics degree from Delhi University and an MBA from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). He landed a campus job at Deutsche Bank in London on the trading floor before moving to JPMorgan Partners, the bank's private equity arm. There, he spent six years investing across Asia, gaining exposure to a vast array of businesses, from tech startups to beer bottle manufacturers.
This experience eventually led him to co-found his own fund, India Equity Partners (IEP), where he and his partners raised a massive $350 million for their first fund. But even at the helm of a successful fund, he felt a pull toward the operational side of the business.
"What I realized after six or seven years doing banking was that big organizations and me don't really work very well together. Even in the fund business, you're one step removed from the actual action... I enjoyed working at an operational level a little bit more."
The Investor's Lens: Lessons That Shaped SafeGold
Two specific experiences during his time as an investor were critical in shaping the thesis for SafeGold.
First was a painful lesson in psychological bias. Gaurav recounts the story of passing on the opportunity for IEP to buy a significant stake in Domino's India (Jubilant Foodworks) from his former employer, JPMorgan. Having managed the investment through a period of intense struggle and write-offs at JPMorgan, his personal history with the asset clouded his judgment, causing him to miss out on what would have been a monumental, fund-returning investment. It was a stark lesson in how emotion and personal history can override objective analysis.
The second, and more formative, experience was an investment in Manappuram Finance, a leading gold loan company. Serving on its board gave Gaurav an unparalleled, front-row seat to the realities of the Indian gold market. He saw firsthand the colossal scale of privately held gold in Indian households and its function as a primary savings instrument. This deep, operational immersion into the complexities of storing, insuring, and managing physical gold revealed a massive, unorganized sector ripe for technological disruption.
The Genesis of SafeGold: A Strategic Pivot
Around 2016, Gaurav became fascinated with the potential of cryptocurrency. His initial idea was ambitious: to create a gold-backed crypto token that could act as a global currency. However, he quickly recognized the regulatory hurdles in India and pivoted towards a more immediate, local, and arguably larger opportunity: using technology to solve the core problems of the physical gold market for the Indian masses.
This led to the foundational strategic insight behind SafeGold, what Gaurav calls the "No Global Competitor" thesis. He deliberately chose a market that was uniquely Indian in its scale and cultural context, creating a natural moat against large international technology companies.
"It won't be like Ola started and they got, you know, Uber coming in as a competitor... You don't have any natural global competitors... if you can build the company that works over here, you'll be the largest company in the world in your sector."
Company Dossier: Inside SafeGold
Founded in 2017, Digital Gold India Private Limited, the entity behind the SafeGold brand, was established to address the deep-seated friction in India's traditional gold market—concerns about purity, high ticket sizes, and the risks of physical storage.
The B2B2C Engine: Infrastructure, Not a Brand
Instead of pursuing a costly direct-to-consumer (D2C) model, SafeGold operates as the foundational infrastructure for digital gold in India. Its business model is built on a Business-to-Business-to-Consumer (B2B2C) framework, providing its full suite of services via APIs and SDKs to other businesses.
This API-first approach allowed SafeGold to become the "Intel Inside" for digital gold, forging partnerships with over 50 of the largest consumer platforms in the country, including PhonePe, Amazon Pay, Axis Bank, Jar, Tanishq, and CaratLane. This strategy was the engine for its explosive growth, enabling it to acquire a massive user base with extreme capital efficiency.
Financials & Unprecedented Capital Efficiency
SafeGold's financial trajectory is a testament to its strategic model. The company has achieved staggering growth while raising a minimal amount of capital.
Total Funding: $2.38 million (approx. ₹16 crores) across four seed rounds. Key investors include the World Gold Council, Pravega Ventures, and Beenext.
Revenue Growth:
FY 2022: ₹2,474 crore
FY 2023: ₹4,498 crore (81.8% YoY growth)
FY 2024: An estimated ₹6,100 crore (35% YoY growth)
Profitability: After a small loss in FY22, the company turned profitable in FY23 with a reported profit of ₹11 crore.
User Base: Nearly 50 million people have purchased SafeGold through its platform and partners, with approximately 9 million users holding an active gold balance.
The Trust Framework: Solving for a Digital Asset
Recognizing that trust is the primary currency in finance, SafeGold built a robust three-tiered security structure:
Secure Custodian: All physical gold backing the digital purchases is stored in secure, insured vaults managed by a world-class custodian, Brink's.
Independent Trustee: An independent entity, Vistra Corporate Services, is appointed to act on behalf of customers. The trustee's job is to verify that every gram of digital gold is 100% backed by physical gold and to protect customer assets in the unlikely event that SafeGold ceases to operate.
Comprehensive Insurance: The vaulted gold is fully insured against loss or damage.
Product Innovation: Making Gold Productive
Beyond simply allowing users to buy, sell, and store gold digitally, SafeGold's core innovation lies in making a traditionally passive asset productive. Its most disruptive product is Gold Leasing ("Gains"), which allows customers to lease their idle digital gold to a network of vetted jewelers for a fixed term, earning a yield of 3% to 6% annually, paid in additional grams of gold. This transforms gold from a "dead asset sitting in lockers" into an active, income-generating one.
The Vision for the Future
While SafeGold has achieved immense success in India, Gaurav Mathur views it as just the beginning. His vision extends far beyond the domestic market.
"SafeGold's vision is to create a global standard for digital transactions in gold."
The company is actively executing on this, with operations already live in Thailand and a strategic partnership with the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) to build a hub for the Middle East. The ultimate, long-term ambition remains rooted in his original idea: to leverage this global user base and infrastructure to build a seamless, gold-backed digital currency, fundamentally reshaping the future of money.
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