Corporate Card Provider Karbon Cards Bags $2 Mn From Cred, Citrus Pay Founders

Bengaluru-based fintech startup Karbon Card has raised $2 Mn seed funding from Cred founder Kunal Shah, and Citrus Pay cofounders Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta. Amrish Rau is Pine Labs’ new CEO, whereas Gupta has founded Jupiter, which is looking to launch its neobanking services soon. In addition, unnamed Chinese investors have also participated in the funding round, as per the company’s statement.

Founded in 2019 by Pei-fu Hsieh and Amit Jangir, Karbon Card offers corporate cards to Indian startups with funding of at least INR 25 Lakh. The company offers its services to more than 200 Indian startups that include Cred, MoEngage, Jumbotail, MyGate, Jupiter, and several others. Karbon plans to expand its services to more startups in India by the end of the fiscal year 2020.

The company believes that there are more than 2K-3K startups in India that require corporate cards but are not able to get it, due to bank criteria and conditions. Karbon Card highlighted that its corporate cards can be used within 24 hours of issuance and requires no fixed deposits and guarantees.

“We realise that it is very difficult for startups in India to get a corporate card from the Banks. The banks ask for fixed deposits, guarantee and all kinds of documents in order to issue the card. That’s a lot of pain for the startups,” Hsieh told Inc42.

Karbon Cards plans to use the latest funding to develop its product, operations and expand its customer base. The company’s corporate cards are bundled with several tools and rewards of up to $50K for startups. This includes Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits, expense management software and discounts on several other platforms such as MakeMyTrip, Uber, Hubspot, Freshworks.

The expense management tool helps the founders to better understand the expenses of the company and the respective changes over time. The employees, too, can navigate between multitudes of expense reports and get reimbursed.

Talking about the investment, Gupta, founder of Jupiter and Citrus Pay, said “I can see first-hand that within a short span of a few months, Karbon Card has been embraced by many Indian startups. We see massive potential for this sector in India. I myself am not just an investor but also an avid user of Karbon Card.”

Hsieh added, “Our vision is to empower all startups to achieve more through a Karbon Card.  We will strive to improve your cash flow with credit, help you to spend wiser and manage better through our suite of products.  Let us worry about these issues while you focus on changing the world.”