Kirana-tech startup Khatabook on Tuesday said that it has raised $100 million (Rs 740 crore) as part of its Series C funding round led by US-based venture capital firms Tribe Capital and Moore Strategic Ventures.
Other investors in the round include Alkeon Capital and existing investors B Capital Group, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, RTP Ventures, Unilever Ventures, and Better Capital.
The round also saw former and current partners of Andreessen Horowitz including Balaji Srinivasan and Sriram Krishnan.
With this fundraise, the valuation of the startup stands at $600 million.
Alongside this round, Khatabook will also be buying back $10 million worth of ESOPs (employee stock ownership plans). Eligible employees will be able to sell as much as 30% of their vested options, the company said.
Khatabook has also expanded its ESOP pool to $50 million.
The current funding will help the startup strengthen its talent base, as it looks to accelerate hiring across engineering, product, design, analytics, and data science functions. Currently, Khatabook has a headcount of more than 200 employees.
It will also use the proceeds to launch financial services offerings for its merchant partners. Mint earlier reported that Khatabook was looking to enter the financial services space and launch insurance and credit offerings for its partners.
The startup posted losses of Rs 126 crore for 2019-20 with zero operating revenue since starting operations. However, the company looks to begin its monetisation focus through distribution of financial services.
"The first phase of our journey was enabling digital transformation by building a tech ecosystem for Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Now that we have created a widely accepted digital platform, the next step will be digitally-enabled financial services for small businesses,” said Ravish Naresh, chief executive officer and co-founder of Khatabook.
The two-year company provides digital tools to kiranas and enables MSMEs to increase efficiency and recover dues. It has also launched Pagarkhata, a staff and salary management platform.
Earlier this year, it acquired software-as-a-service (SaaS) accounting software Biz Analyst for $10 million to offer premium value-added services like on-demand access to sales, purchase, and inventory management.
Without disclosing absolute figures, Khatabook said that it has witnessed 150% year-on-year revenue growth for the financial year 2020-2021.
At present, it is available in 13 languages and claims to have more than 10 million monthly active users on its platform.
