FloBiz, an Indian startup that’s constructing a neobank for small- and medium-sized companies within the South Asian market, stated on Monday it has raised $31 million in a brand new financing spherical as it really works to broaden its product choices.
Sequoia Capital India and Think Investments co-led the 18-month-old startup’s Series B financing spherical. Existing traders Elevation Capital and Beenext additionally participated within the spherical, which brings FloBiz‘s all-time increase to over $41 million.
The startup’s marquee providing — referred to as myBillBook — helps small- and medium-sized companies digitize their invoicing, streamline enterprise accounting, and automate workflows of their enterprises.
India, the world’s second largest web market, is residence to thousands and thousands of small- and medium-sized companies. Scores of startups have launched neobanks within the nation lately to give attention to serve millennials or companies.
“SME-focussed neobanks are building engagement with business- clients through their ability to provide solutions like automated invoicing, collections/payments, accounting, inventory and sales management, taxes and in some cases interest on current deposits as well (banks can’t pay interest). This may help to ramp- up and upfront their monetisation prospects,” analysts at Jefferies wrote in a report back to shoppers final week.
myBillBook, which helps Hindi, Gujarati and Tamil in addition to English, will add assist for “at least” 5 extra regional languages throughout the subsequent six months, the startup stated, including that the app has been downloaded over 5 million occasions.
“The product will also see deeper use of technologies like AI & image processing to make the onboarding process for the less tech-savvy SMB owners in tier 2 and tier 3 cities of India a delightful first step to digital accounting,” the startup stated.
Scores of high-profile entrepreneurs — together with Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Kunal Shah of CRED, Jiten Gupta of Jupiter, Amrish Rau of Pine Labs, Krishnan Menon of BukuKas, and Nitin Gupta of Uni Cards — have additionally backed FloBiz within the new financing spherical.
“Small businesses are the real heroes of our economy. In order to power the SMB economy with technology, one needs deep understanding, instinct and empathy for this audience,” stated Tejeshwi Sharma, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital India, in an announcement.
“We are really impressed by the user centricity, product focus and experimentative approach of the FloBiz founders. There is almost a perfect founder market fit. The team is stoked to partner with FloBiz on their mission of building a neobank for the growing SMBs of India.”
Rahul Raj, co-founder and chief govt of FloBiz, stated the startup will deploy the recent capital to “accelerate projects which have been in the works up till now – building personalisable modules & features into myBillBook, diversifying core product offerings and preparing to roll out financial services. We have a slew of developments in the pipeline to further delight our SMB partners in the next 12 months.”
