Business-to-business payments platform EnKash has raised $3 million (Rs 20.9 crore) in its Series A round of funding from Mayfield India and Axilor Ventures.
The company, which is operated by Nehat Tech Solutions Pvt. Ltd, said in a statement that it will use the fresh capital to upgrade its technology and ramp up its leadership team.
EnKash, which was founded two years ago by Yadvendra Tyagi, Hemant Vishnoi and Naveen Bindal, is an integrated platform connecting corporates, vendors and credit providers. It helps businesses manage their purchase orders and invoices, and enable and track payments to suppliers or from buyers. It counts private-sector lenders Kotak Mahindra Bank and ICICI Bank among its clients.
"Businesses in India have been struggling with manual payment processes for a long time,” said Yadvendra Tyagi, co-founder and chief executive officer of EnKash. “We are easing out B2B payment problems for thousands of businesses today.”
There has been heightened interest in the financial technology segment over the past few years. According to a VCCircle survey, 50% of the respondents said they favoured the fintech segment this year.
Earlier this month, venture capital firm Lightspeed India Partners led a $3.5-million (Rs 24.5 crore) investment in Setu, a fintech application programming interface (API) infrastructure startup.
There were some big-ticket deals in 2018 in the broader fintech space. These included PolicyBazaar’s $238-million cheque from SoftBank and others, LendingKart’s $87-million round led by Fullerton, ClearTax’s $54-million round led by Hong Kong-based Composite Capital, Digit Insurance and InstaReM’s fundraises of $45 million each, and INDwealth’s $30-million funding round from Hong Kong-based hedge fund Steadview Capital.
Investors
US-headquartered Mayfield, which typically participates between the seed and Series A stages, has been investing in India since 2006. Its focus areas include consumer and business sectors across non-tech, tech-enabled, and technology verticals.
Mayfield India's fintech investments include digital lending platform LendingKart and online microlending platform Upwards.
Its other bets in India include meat and fish ordering platform Licious, food-tech startup Box8, logistics startup Emiza, cloud-based telephony services provider Knowlarity, online trip planning platform Triphobo and ad-tech firm Amagi, among others.
Founded in 2014, Axilor makes pre-seed investments through its accelerator programme and early-stage bets from a $30 million seed fund launched last year.
Axilor's recent investments include Bengaluru-based radiology platform 5C Network (India) Pvt. Ltd and location-based local language social platform Khidki.