Eight Roads-backed MineralTree gets new PE investor

By Joseph Rai

  • 28 Mar 2019
Credit: 123RF.com

US-based MineralTree Inc, which offers payment automation solutions and is led by its Indian-origin founder, on Thursday said it has raised $50 million (Rs 345 crore) in a new funding round led by private equity firm Great Hill Partners.

Venture capital firms Eight Roads Ventures and .406 Ventures -- both existing investors -- also contributed, MineralTree said in a statement.

The fresh capital will help the company accelerate growth and expand its opportunities in accounts payable automation for middle-market businesses, it added.

Accounts payable automation refers to technology that is used to streamline various accounting and financial processes.

MineralTree was founded by its chief executive BC Krishna in 2010. It has a small back-end resource team in India. The company is another example of India back-end and US front-end SaaS (software-as-a-service) play, said an Eight Roads spokesperson. 

Mineral Tree said it clocked 80% revenue growth and expanded its partner network to 28 financial institutions, and while payment processing volume topped $5 billion last year. This year, the company aims to add new capabilities to its flagship product Invoice-to-Pay that will boost user experience and expand integration with new accounting systems.

“We see increasing demand for accounts payable automation as more middle-market businesses recognise the critical importance of automating and optimising their financial processes,” said Matt Vettel, managing partner at Great Hill Partners.

Eight Roads Ventures (formerly Fidelity Growth Partners) had initially invested $6.3 million in MineralTree in 2012, according to VCCEdge, the data and research platform of News Corp VCCircle. 

Eight Roads along with .406 Ventures had further invested $11.1 million in the US-based company in 2015.

Before starting MineralTree, its founder Krishna had earlier floated content management solutions firm FutureTense Inc, which was backed by Fidelity Ventures and acquired by Open Market. Krishna had also started fraud detection solutions developer Memento, which was backed by Bain Capital and .406 Ventures before being acquired by Fidelity National Information Services (FIS).

Investors

Great Hill Partners, which has raised over $5 billion in commitments, has made 14 investments across the payments and fintech landscape. The private equity firm targets investments in the range of $25-200 million, the statement said.

Eight Roads Ventures is the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International Ltd in Asia, Europe and the US. It has a focus on healthcare, technology and consumer products.

The investment firm has been active this year in India with three bets announced recently. Earlier this month, it invested in Whatfix, which provides solutions for engagement with software.