Neobank Startup IppoPay Acquires Risk Management Platform Tutelar

Neobank startup IppoPay has acquired AI-enabled risk management startup Tutelar for an undisclosed amount. 

With this acquisition, Tutelar will help IppoPay in preventing fraudulent activities in the payment space. Besides, Tutelar’s founder Pradeep Kumar will join IppoPay as a risk specialist. 

“Tutelar is an important addition to our infra-stack. KYC and transaction fraud detection and risk management is a very critical problem that RBI, NPCI and the industry at large are trying to address. The acquisition of Tutelar is an important constituent in fighting off against fraud in the payments space,” said Mohan K, CEO of IppoPay. 

Founded in 2022 by Kumar, Tutelar builds fraud detection products for online payment segment. In essence, it helps banks and other financial intermediaries to make safe and secure online payments. Some of its offerings include risk-free onboarding, dispute resolutions, KYC fraud detection, transaction fraud detection and misselling prevention, among others.

“We built Tutelar with a vision to improve reporting and control of payments fraud across industries and misselling especially affecting banks and financial intermediaries. We wanted to partner with someone who will help us build on this vision and we believe IppoPay is the right company for this,” Kumar said. 

Meanwhile, IppoPay is set up by Mohan K and Jaikumar in 2020. The startup is essentially an API-based fintech platform that offers banking solutions to businesses such as pay-in, pay-outs, and fund transfers, among others. It mainly caters to underserved businesses such as freelancers, hompreneurs and MSMEs.

IppoPay recently onboarded veteran industrialist Atish Shelar into its company. Shelar holds decades of experience in the payment ecosystem. He has previously worked with HDFC Bank, BillDesk and M2P.  

Earlier this year, IppoPay secured $2.1 Mn seed funding from Coinbase Ventures, Better Capital, Blume Founders Fund. 

Prior to this, IppoPay bagged undisclosed pre-seed funding from Better Capital, Prabhu Rangarajan from M2P and Sailesh Ramakrishnan from Rocketship VC in 2021.

IppoPay said that it provides payment infrastructure to small businesses working in the Tier-3 cities and beyond. 

The Chennai-based startup claims to have offered services to over 1.7 Lakh MSME merchants in Tamil Nadu. 

In the neobanking segment, IppoPay faces competition from a slew of other players such as Open, Fi Pockets and Niyo that have secured $50 Mn, $16.8 Mn and $30 Mn respectively in the year 2022.

According to a report, the Indian neobanking industry, which was pegged at $3.42 Bn in the financial year 2022, is likely to become a $11.6 Bn market by FY25. The industry will grow at a CAGR of 50.5% by FY2025.