Khatabook Raises $ 25 Million to Help Companies in India Digitally Capture Financial Transactions and Accept Online Payments – TechCrunch

Even though tens of millions of Indians have gone online for the first time in recent years, most companies in the nation remain offline. They continue to rely on long notebooks to keep a log of their financial transactions. A nine-month-old startup that helps them digitize their bookkeeping and accept online payments has just raised a significant amount of capital to expand its business to new round of financing. The Series A round for the startup was funded by GGV Capital, partners of DST Global, RTP Ventures, Sequoia India, Tencent and Y Combinator. The round was also attended by a number of well-known angel investors, including Amrish Rau, Anand Chandrasekharan, Deep Nishar, Gokul Rajaram, Jitendra Gupta, Kunal Bahl and Kunal Shah. The startup has so far collected $ 29 million.

Khatabook runs an Android app of the same name, which enables micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to keep a digital record of their financial transactions and accept payments online. Ravish Naresh, co-founder and CEO of Khatabook, told TechCrunch in an interview this week that the app, launched in the Google Play Store last December, attracted 5 million merchants from more than 3,000 cities and villages in India.

The deal, which charges no traders, saw more than $ 3 billion in transactions completed in August, Naresh said. Most distributors in emerging markets are currently not online. They continue to rely on their financial transactions &#821

1; for example, loans – on notebooks and notes to log. As you can imagine, this methodology is not structured.

Even as Reliance Jio, a telecommunications operator founded by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, he transformed the Indian market and brought out Naresh Millions of Indians are online for the first time in the last three years, and most companies in the country still do business without the use of technology. “Can we create an app that allows traders to easily digitize their accounting?” He said. “These shopkeepers and street vendors have a web-enabled smartphone, they just do not use it in their businesses. All they needed was an easy-to-use app. “

For a few months, the startup has seen a monthly growth of 20%, he said. Within six months, the app has helped companies recover unpaid $ 5 billion in credit, Naresh said. Without marketing, the app has also gained a significant number of users in Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

“At Khatabook, we took significant early steps to take advantage of this trend to digitize Indian shopkeepers. For most of our distributors we are the first enterprise software they have used in their entire lives. And we will continue to build on further innovation to enable the growth of a still largely untapped sector.

In a statement, Hans Tung, Managing Partner of GGV Capital, said: “As a global investor, we are looking for founders who understand the local market and respond quickly and flexibly to growth opportunities. We also see that in the Khatabook team. “

Naresh, co-founder of real estate startup Housing, said Khatabook Use the capital to create new features such as billing and billing for merchants. Over the next 12 months, Khatabook plans to add 25 million businesses.

A growing number of startups and big giants in India are trying to help businesses. OkCredit, which raised $ 67 million last month, serves 5 million merchants. IndiaMART, a 23-year-old B2B company that went public this year, ran a round last month in a startup called Vyapar, which deals with similar issues. BharatPe, headquartered in New Delhi, raised $ 50 million at the end of August to help businesses accept digital payments.

Last month, Google unveiled a version of its corporate payment service that will allow it to quickly build up a certain web presence and accept online payments. [19659002] “There are more than 60 million small and medium-sized businesses in India, but only a fraction of them support digital payments. Imagine the transformation that’s possible when more of these merchants can access payments online, “said Ambarish Kenghe, director and product manager of Google Pay, at the event.

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