Fintech Startup Open Raises Pre-Series A Funding Led By Unicorn India Ventures, Recruit Co

Bengaluru-based fintech startup Open Financial Technologies has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-series A funding led by Unicorn India Ventures and Recruit Co. Ltd, through its investment subsidiary RSP India Fund LLC.

Existing investors ISME-ACE and Vaibhav Domkundwar’s BetterCapital AngelList syndicate also participated in the round. Earlier, Open has raised investments from Citrus Pay founders Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta, TaxiforSure founder Apremaya Radhakrishnan, Chiranth Patil of BetaPlus Ventures and Archana Priyadarshini of Unicorn India Ventures.

Anish Achuthan, Co-founder and CEO of Open shared that the “funding will be used to accelerate customer acquisition and growth as we target to onboard 200K small businesses into the platform in the next two years. Further, the funding will be used to enhance our core platform to launch new products on lending and wealth management using AI and financial analytics.”

The startup is also working on an innovative business expense card with an attached credit-line called DUO for enabling pay-outs and employee expense management for employees. Open has currently partnered with seven banks for powering the banking services on the platform.

On the development, Archana Priyadarshini, Partner, Unicorn India Ventures said, “Fintech in India is one of the fastest growing sectors because technology can play an enabler in taking banking solutions at affordable rates to the unbanked population. Open’s business model of extending traditional banking services through digital route is a unique proposition within fintech and this prompted us to lead the round.”

Open was founded in May 2017 by serial entrepreneurs Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko and Ajeesh Achuthan along with ex-TaxiforSure CFO Deena Jacob. The startup offers a digital banking service for small businesses. The team of 25 people has garnered one thousand customers.

Open offers a digital current account in partnership with banks that offers all the features of a traditional bank account with integrated tools to automate finances for small businesses. The account has all the tools required by a small business to send and receive payments combined with an AI-based accounting engine that automates bookkeeping and expense management.

Apart from enabling the businesses to run their finances effectively, the platform also offers an APIs for developers to integrate banking and payments into their business workflows.

Booming Fintech Space In India

With the fintech segment booming in India, we have several players in the segment including Lendingkart, FlexiLoans, Rupeelend, Myloanbuddy and MoneyinMinutes.

Recently players like OYE!Loans,  MyLoanCare, Rubique and Capital Float raised funds to support their aggressive growth plans.

Overall, as per Inc42 DataLabs Indian Startup Funding report 2017, the Indian fintech industry has received $3.01 Bn across 111 deals in 2017. And the sector continued to lead its growth, as according to the Indian Tech Startup Funding Q1 2018 report, fintech as a sector witnessed the highest funding.

A report by NASSCOM further forecasts the Indian fintech software market to touch $2.4 Bn by 2020, from the current $1.2 Bn. As the space witnesses growth, Open Financial Services with its latest funding push has a huge market to scale up.