Zeni, an artificial intelligence (AI) based booking and accounting fintech startup, on Thursday said it has raised $35 million (Rs 259 crore) as part of its Series B funding round led by new investor Elevation Capital.
New investors, Think Investments and Neeraj Arora also participated in the funding round besides contribution from existing backers, Saama Capital, Amit Singhal, Sierra Ventures, Twin Ventures, Dragon Capital and Liquid 2 Ventures, Zeni said in a statement.
Zeni added it will use the fresh capital to invest aggressively in its team in the US and India across product, technology, marketing, sales and finance operations.
The startup was founded in 2019 by homegrown entrepreneurs and twins Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde. Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde previously co-founded AI-powered travel assistant Mezi in 2015, and social music streaming service Dhingana in 2007.
While Sunnyvale, California-based Mezi was sold to American Express in 2018, Pune-based Dhingana was sold to San Francisco-based digital music service Rdio in March 2014.
Zeni's bookkeeping and accounting platform offers real-time insights and analysis of a company’s key financial metrics via its AI-powered Zeni Dashboard.
The startup claims that it currently handles over $500 million in funds each month across more than 100 startup customers.
Swapnil Shinde, co-founder and CEO, Zeni, said that the company has clocked a 550% revenue growth and 375% customer growth year-over-year on the back of huge demand from startups to digitise and automate their business finance.
Fintech has dominated all PE/VC dealmaking that has taken place in the world of technology this year as one in three deals in tech belonged to the subsector, a VCCircle analysis showsed in May.
Elevation Capital's investment in Zeni broadens its financial services portfolio that includes unicorn Paytm, ClearTax and NSE.
Its financial services portfolio apart from Paytm, Cleartax and NSE include Acko, Aye Finance, Capital Float, Sarvagram and Ziploan.
Last month, Elevation led Series A funding in Fampay, which provides a payments service focused on teenagers. while last week VCCircle reported that it put seed money in payments startup focused on millennials.
Elevation was the third most active VC investor in terms of striking new deals between January and June this year.