DeFi startup Pillow raises $3 million in round led by Elevation Capital

A clutch of angel investors – including Polygon founders JD Kanani and Sandeep Nainwal, FalconX cofounder Prabhakar Reddy, Livspace’s Ramakant Sharma and Dunzo’s Mukund Jha – also participated in the fundraising.

The capital will be used to build alpha-generating DeFi strategies for popular crypto assets as well as for global expansion, according to a statement released on Friday.

Founded in 2021 by Arindam Roy, Rajath KM, and Kartik Mishra, Pillow helps crypto owners generate yields on their idle assets. It is a community for users worldwide who want to earn interest on their crypto, instead of letting them lie idle. The company opened its platform to the public on Feb. 3.

“We want to create a future where accessibility to decentralised finance is democratised, if not more than traditional finance,” Roy, who is also the chief executive of the firm, said in the statement. “We’re fulfilling this vision by letting our users gain access to DeFi yield opportunities in a simple, safe, and secure manner.”

Pillow claims to have achieved $1 million in assets under management (AUMs) within three weeks of launching its beta operations in December 2021. That, it said, came on the back of its stablecoin strategy, which provides 17.8% yield. To ensure customers’ crypto assets are secure, Pillow uses BitGo, the world’s leading custodial services, for custody management. It leverages Gnosis Safe for multiple sign-ins..

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“We believe the next big unlock in Web 3.0 is going to come from significantly improving user experiences,” Vaas Bhaskar, principal at Elevation Capital, said in the statement. “Pillow fits right into that theme by abstracting away the complexities of DeFi, and hence making it more accessible.”