Mewt, a banking app for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) of India, on Wednesday said it has raised $4.6 million (Rs 35.8 crore) in a seed funding round led by global fintech investor Quona Capital.
Beenext, DG Daiwa Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Allin Capital and a clutch of fintech angel investors, participated in this funding round, said Mewt in a statement.
The Bengaluru-based startup, operated by Mewt Account Pvt. Ltd, will use the fresh capital to expand its team and launch a reward-based debit card for Indian MSMEs, it added.
Mewt, which was founded by BITS Pilani alumni Rishabh Jain and Kushal Prakash last year, helps simplify business banking for MSMEs by unifying accounts offered by state-run banks, private banks and neo banks under one super account. It allows the businesses to make fast transfers and accept payments with no delays on proprietary QR code.
"Mewt is on its way to redefining merchant QR payments in India the same way Square in the US has done for point-of-sale terminals," noted Jain.
The startup is also working towards making its application accessible in multiple regional languages, he added.
The startup has been able to reach over 200,000 small businesses across more than 600 tier-II and tier-III cities in the country just within just four months since January, the statement said.
“The massive volume of MSMEs clamouring for this service shows us just how complex cash management has become for MSMEs in this digital age. We look forward to what MSMEs can do with one super-charged platform from Mewt," said Quona Capital, partner, Varun Malhotra.
Last month, VCCircle reported that Quona Capital is set to mark the final close of its third fund in a few months at around $325-350 million, a number much higher than its targeted corpus of $250 million. The venture capital firm's portfolio in India includes IndiaMart, CreditMantri, NeoGrowth, Fisdom, ZestMoney and SMEcorner. It has exited IndiaMart.
Anirudh Garg, Investor, Beenext, noted that payment tracking and reconciliation for MSMEs is a pressing problem that has been waiting to be solved.
"Mewt is on its way to achieving a product-market fit for its product, as is evident from the usage and customer metrics," added Garg.
Beenext's fintech investments in India include BharatPe. Its recent fintech bets include financial services platform Verve and lending focused 42 Cards.
Fintech startups have been attracting both early stage and growth funding in recent weeks despite the liquidity squeeze in the market.
Just last week, MSME fintech lender FlexiLoans and small business credit platform Kissht raised significant growth capital of $90 million and $80 million respectively.
Earlier this month, fintech unicorn Slice raised $50 million in a Series C funding round led by existing investor Tiger Global.
