GoDutch Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates an eponymous financial technology startup focussed on group payments, has raised $1.7 million (Rs 12.81 crore at current exchange rates) in a seed funding round.
The round in the Mumbai-based startup has been led by marquee venture capital firm Matrix Partners India. Other investors in the round include Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital and VentureSouq.
Angel investors that backed goDutch include Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, ICICI Labs head Rohan Angrish and Sumon Sadhu, the startup said in a statement.
The company was co-founded by Aniruddh Singh, Riyaz Khan and Sagar Sheth, all of whom are graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay. It says its platform allows users to record, split and automatically settle group transactions such as rent payments, expenses for travel and shopping, dining bills and home delivery.
The startup has also launched the goDutch card in partnership with CSB Bank. The product enables the real-time splitting of group payments through both online and offline merchants. The startup says that it is targeting to reach over 50 million consumers living in Tier-I and Tier-II locations.
“Currently, for group payments people are using traditional payment apps which are designed for one-to-one payments. Given the frequency of shared transactions one has with their friends, it’s time to look at this problem separately,” said Khan, who is goDutch’s chief product officer.
Matrix India director Rajat Agarwal said the firm was confident of its investment in goDutch because of its potential for the group commerce segment and because there were no solutions in the market for seamless peer-to-peer payment settlement.
Matrix has invested in several financial services and fintech companies previously. These include Five Star Business Finance, OfBusiness, Razorpay, Mswipe, Ola Financial Services and ZipLoan.
Deals in the fintech segment
Investor interest in the financial technology segment has continued unabated despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Growing emphasis on digital payments has led to several startups raising capital to enhance existing products or enter into new categories.
Earlier this month, blockchain-based chit fund management platform ChitMonks raised about Rs 5 crore from early-stage investor Unicorn India Ventures.
Last month, Rainmatter Capital – the fintech-focused fund and incubator set up by online stock trading startup Zerodha – invested Rs 3.5 crore in GoldenPi Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a marketplace platform focused on fixed-income investments.
In April, payments infrastructure platform YAP secured around Rs 34.6 crore, barely two months after its angel funding round. The exercise was led by Singapore-based Beenext, with participation from 8i Ventures Fund, the DMI Group via its investment vehicle Sparkle Fund and Better Capital.