June 26, 2019
Open, a Bangalore, India-based fintech, said it raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Tiger Global Management to expand its core business banking service and expand into new verticals.
The funding round was backed by Tanglin Venture Partners Advisors as well as existing investors 3one4 Capital, Speedinvest and BetterCapital AngelList Syndicate.
The company said the funding will be used to scale the existing team, launch new products and value added services and reach a goal of 1 million SMEs in the next 12 months.
"Open's target base is the 51 million small and medium enterprises in India for whom banking is broken," co-founder and CEO Anish Acuthan told Mobile Payments Today via email. "Businesses struggle to use multiple tools to collect payments and manage their business finances."
Acuthan said that most SMEs tend to have 2-3 accounts to manage cashflow reconciliation, use a separate payment gateway for online collections and do manual payouts. Also, newer business models call for the need to do instant refunds to customers over APIs, and Open's integrated platform allows companies to do unified banking, which includes accounting, payment, expense management and payroll all together.
Open is launching two new products right away, including a business credit card called Open+, which provides a 30-day, interest free line of credit and Layer, a programmable bank account for developers, who can build their own features on top of the account and also integrate the account with their own services.
Open officials told Mobile Payments Today that the company is planning to expand the business internationally, with plans for Southeast Asia and the Middle East by 2020, and they are "working on strategies" to enter the U.S.
Topics: Mobile Banking, Region: APAC
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