Pop Goes Another Unicorn: Slice’s Valuation Falls Nearly 70% in a $100-Million Round

India’s unicorn club once had a remarkably forgiving membership policy.

Raise one round at a valuation exceeding $1 billion and the horn was yours. Revenue could arrive later. Profit could arrive much later. The valuation itself was treated as a permanent corporate achievement rather than the price paid for a small parcel of shares during an extraordinary funding market.

Now somebody has switched on the heat.

Earlier this week, it was Unacademy. Once valued at $3.44 billion, the edtech company has been acquired by upGrad for approximately $206 million—a 94% collapse from its peak.

Today, it is Slice.

The fintech-turned-bank has reportedly raised about $100 million from Neo Group, Japan’s Kado Global and existing investor Moore Strategic Ventures at a valuation of approximately $450–470 million.

Slice was valued at more than $1 billion when it raised $220 million in 2021. Subsequent reports placed its peak valuation between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion.

Depending on the benchmark used, roughly two-thirds of that valuation has now disappeared. The unicorn has become popcorn.

“A unicorn valuation is a photograph of one funding round, not a permanent certificate of corporate worth," says a private-equity professional at a leading investment firm, who requested anonymity because he is not authorised to comment publicly. India did not suddenly stop producing good companies. "It has simply started applying real transactions, real cash flows and real consequences to prices created during the funding carnival,” he says.

Slice did not merely shrink. It changed species

Slice’s valuation reset is particularly revealing because the business receiving the new money is fundamentally different from the company that became a unicorn.

In 2021, Slice was a fashionable credit-card challenger for young Indians. It issued cards through a digital app, allowed bills to be divided into three instalments and claimed five million registered users. Tiger Global and Insight Partners co-led the $220-million round that carried it into the unicorn club.

Founder Rajan Bajaj said at the time that most of the capital would be used to scale rather than burn.

Then regulation changed the game. In June 2022, the Reserve Bank of India told non-bank prepaid-payment-instrument issuers that wallets and prepaid cards could not be loaded using credit lines. The clarification struck at the machinery behind several fintech credit products, including the wider category in which Slice had built its popularity.

Slice’s answer was not a cosmetic pivot. It pursued something far more ambitious: becoming a bank.

The company merged with North East Small Finance Bank in October 2024, transferring the fintech group’s assets and liabilities into a regulated banking institution. Slice gained a banking licence, deposit franchise and the ability to lend directly. It also inherited the burdens of a small lender with weak asset quality and a concentrated regional legacy.

That transformation deserves credit. Many venture-funded companies respond to a broken model by changing the presentation. Slice changed the institution.

But banking has replaced a seductive fintech story with less forgiving arithmetic. The bank is improving. The valuation has still collapsed

Slice Small Finance Bank reported a ₹48.4-crore profit in FY26, reversing the previous year’s ₹216.7-crore loss. Total income reportedly increased to ₹1,402.7 crore.

Its balance sheet has expanded rapidly. According to a February 2026 assessment by Acuité Ratings, deposits increased from ₹1,520 crore in FY24 to ₹4,349 crore by December 2025. Advances jumped from ₹802 crore to ₹4,159 crore over the same period. Net non-performing assets improved from 8.36% to 3.98%, while net worth rose from just ₹61 crore in FY24 to ₹845 crore by December 2025.

These are not the numbers of a corpse receiving emergency capital. They are the numbers of a complicated reconstruction.

But the same rating assessment identifies the unfinished work. Slice’s cost-to-income ratio stood at 83.43% during the nine months ended December 2025, against Acuité’s peer range of 60–65%. Operating expenses had increased sharply as the bank invested in branches, technology and employees.

Its provision-coverage ratio was approximately 28%, which Acuité described as modest. Profitability had arrived only recently and had not yet been tested across an economic or credit cycle.

At approximately ₹4,275–4,465 crore, the reported valuation is more than five times Slice’s December 2025 net worth. The valuation may be dramatically lower than its fintech peak. That does not automatically make the bank cheap.

“Slice may have become a better institution while becoming a less valuable company,” says a venture capitalist whose firm has backed a competing fintech. A banking licence, deposits and profitability make the business more substantial but they also replace fintech fantasy with capital ratios, provisioning, bad loans and the brutal mathematics of return on equity, he adds requesting anonymity.

How much of the $100 million will reach the bank?

The headline says Slice has raised $100 million, equivalent to roughly ₹950 crore. But the entire amount may not enter the bank. The funding package reportedly includes a secondary share sale, through which new investors purchase shares from existing shareholders rather than inject capital into the company. The primary–secondary split has not been disclosed.

That three essential questions unanswered.

How much fresh capital will actually strengthen Slice’s balance sheet? Which existing shareholders are selling? And at what gains or losses?

A secondary transaction at a lower company valuation does not prove that every seller has suffered a loss. Early investors may still be exiting above their original acquisition prices. Later investors could face a very different outcome. Without the sellers, share counts and acquisition costs, no responsible calculation can be made.

But the undisclosed split still matters.

If a material part of the advertised $100 million is secondary, Slice receives materially less than ₹950 crore. Existing shareholders obtain liquidity while the bank receives only the primary component.

It also becomes impossible to calculate the dilution imposed on investors who remain.

When a funding announcement mixes primary capital with a secondary exit, the headline number can flatter the company. The bank does not receive the money paid to departing shareholders. "Until the split and the sellers are disclosed, we do not know whether this is principally growth capital, balance-sheet capital or exit capital,” says the above-quoted PE honcho.

Why is the money arriving now?

The down round can be read in two very different ways. The harsher interpretation is that investors have rejected the old valuation logic. Slice reportedly explored raising capital at a valuation below $1 billion earlier this year. The completed round values it at less than half even that diminished expectation.

The kinder interpretation is that investors now have something more tangible to buy. Slice possesses a regulated banking licence, more than ₹4,000 crore each in deposits and advances, improving asset quality and a newly profitable operation. New investors are entering after the valuation has absorbed much of the fintech-era excess.

They may also recognise why the bank needs capital now.

Rapid loan growth must be supported by capital. Weak provisioning buffers require strengthening. A cost-to-income ratio exceeding 80% leaves little room for execution mistakes. Branches, technology, compliance and risk management are expensive—and none can be wished away with a fintech multiple.

The round may, therefore, be simultaneously a humiliation for the old valuation and a rational investment in the new business.

That is what makes it more interesting than another startup obituary. Slice survived the regulatory disruption that undermined its original model. It helped reconstruct a distressed small-finance bank. It expanded deposits and lending, improved bad-loan ratios and delivered a profit. It has achieved almost everything a sceptic might have demanded—except preserve its unicorn price.

Why India’s unicorns are becoming popcorn

Unacademy and Slice operate in different industries and face very different circumstances. One has been acquired after an extraordinary fall in value. The other has raised capital for an operating bank.

They should not be presented as identical corporate failures. But their valuations were born during the same era.

In 2020 and 2021, abundant capital competed for limited access to fast-growing private technology companies. Small funding rounds established enormous headline valuations. Existing investors could mark their holdings upwards without requiring the company to be sold, listed or consistently profitable.

Those valuations were real prices—but for particular securities, negotiated under particular conditions, at a particularly euphoric moment. Today’s transactions are testing what entire businesses are worth when capital is scarcer, growth is more expensive and investors can demand evidence instead of promises.

Unacademy’s acquisition converted a paper valuation into a negotiated exit price. Slice’s funding round converts a fintech-era valuation into the price of a regulated bank whose profitability remains young, operating costs remain high and provisioning needs remain visible.

The heat is doing what heat does. Some unicorns will emerge as durable companies. Some will be acquired for fractions of their peaks. Some will continue growing after accepting deeply unflattering down rounds. And some will discover that the horn was never permanent. It was only corn waiting for the market to pop it.