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Mumbai-based mobile payments platform for micro merchants, FTCash, has raised around $148K (INR 1 Cr) in pre-series A round of funding from the IvyCamp platform.
Founded in 2014 by Sanjeev Chandak, Deepak Kothari and Vaibhav Lodha, FTcash, provides seamless solutions for micro-merchants to accept payments through multiple payment instruments including debit cards, credit cards and mobile wallets.
The startup plans to utilise the funds primarily for aggressive customer and merchant acquisition along with product development.
Sanjeev Chandak, co-founder and CEO of FTCash said, “Small merchants have traditionally been outside the financial ecosystem with over 80% using cash, hence limiting their ability to get loans from banks. FTCash enables electronic payment acceptance, using their existing bank account and a basic mobile phone. In IvyCap, we found a perfect partner to enable faster merchant acquisition and product development to take advantage of this massive opportunity.”
The startup was also a part of Paypal’s Start Tank Incubation Challenge in Chennai.
Vikram Gupta, founder and Managing Partner of IvyCap Ventures said, “We got connected with FTCash through the IvyCamp platform and found value in the strong & relevant credentials of the founding team, the untapped micro merchants segment and the value proposition of seamless cashless transactions via all possible payments sources through just an app. This is amongst the first few investments of IvyCap Ventures Trust Fund II and forms part of our early stage strategy, through which we have allocated INR 60 Cr. for early stage investments via the IvyCamp platform.”
According to a report by Ken Research, digital payments market will be $120 Bn opportunity by 2019, driven by rising number of digital payments with players like Ezetap, Mswipe and iKaaz dominating the market. However, the sector has seen the entry of many new startups like Momoe, Ultracash, Ruplee among others competing in the same segment.
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