Small and medium enterprise (SME) focused neo-bank, Open, on Tuesday said that it has raised Rs 735 crore (roughly $100 million) as a part of its Series C round led by Singapore-based Temasek.
The round also saw participation from Google and Japan-based SBI Investment, valuing the startup at roughly $500 million. Existing investors Tiger Global and 3one4 Capital also participated in the round, which is yet to be closed.
According to the company, it will use the funding to strengthen and accelerate its new product line which includes its embedded finance platform, Zwitch and cloud-native banking platform BankingStack.
At present, BankingStack is deployed across 15 Indian banks, the company said.
With the fundraise the company is also looking to expand its base to five million SMEs across markets of South-east Asia, Europe and the US.
Four-year Open offers a neo-banking platform which integrates with current business accounts of SMEs, and allows them to collect and track payments, make salary payouts while helping in accounting and smart expense management.
“Over the last four years, we’ve grown from strength to strength to be the fastest growing SME neo-banking platform globally. Our product offerings have helped nearly 2 million SMEs in the Indian market and we’re just getting started. We look to expand our product range in the coming months in embedded finance and enterprise banking. We also look to cater to over 5 million SMEs by August 2022,” said Anish Achuthan, chief executive officer, Open.
The platform competes with fintech unicorn, Razorpay, which also launched its SME-focused neo-banking platform Razorpay X in 2018.
At present, Open claims to have close to 2 million SMEs using its solution with its platform processing over $20 billion in annualized transactions. Avendus Capital advised Open on the deal.
“The team at Open have combined deep domain expertise and product-focused rigor to deploy a full-stack solution that places SMEs at the center of a universe of innovation. This platform has set the standard for business banking and will take this full stack approach into new adjacencies and geographies. We are excited to continue our partnership as Open scales into a global fintech innovation engine,” said Pranav Pai, founding partner of 3one4 Capital.
