Bangalore: Indian fintech startup Khatabook raised $100 million, seeking to expand its offerings beyond bookkeeping for merchants as smartphones win over users in the world’s second-most populous country.
The round led by U.S. venture capital firms Moore Strategic Ventures and Tribe Capital valued Khatabook at close to $600 million, the company said Tuesday in an emailed statement. Alkeon Capital, Tencent Holdings Ltd., Sequoia Capital and Unilever Ventures were also among investors in the Series C round.
Khatabook is among a slew of Indian fintech startups growing rapidly as smartphones are becoming an increasingly popular way to shop online and make digital payments, as well as for merchants to run their businesses. Still, competition is stiff with Paytm, Amazon.com Inc., Google, Walmart Inc.’s PhonePe and Reliance Industries Ltd. all offering fintech services to India’s small and medium enterprises.
“We are among the youngest of the fintech players in this segment but already have 10 million monthly active merchants on our platform,” Ravish Naresh, co-founder and chief executive officer, said in a video interview. “Merchant payment services is one of the hottest segments of the fintech market and also competitive and crowded.”
The company launched a mobile app version of the bahi khata, or the handwritten ledger that owners of tiny businesses traditionally use to keep track of daily accounts, in 2019. Its customers include India’s millions of mom-and-pop stores, called kiranas, which have been fixtures in the country’s retail landscape for decades.
Khatabook has since added functions such as staff and expense management, and with the fresh funding it plans to expand further to services including lending, deposits and facilitating payments. The company has more than 200 employees and said it more than doubled its revenue in the latest fiscal year. –Bloomberg
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