Fintech start-up Open raises INR 250 crores from global investors

Team Udayavani, Jun 27, 2019, 6:24 PM IST

Bangalore: Fintech start-up Open has raised INR 250 crores in investment from global venture capital funds like Tiger Global Management, Speedinvest and Beenext. The start-up was founded by entrepreneurs Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko, Deena Jacob and Ajeesh Achuthan in 2017. The two rounds of funding, which were raised over the last three months, has taken the company’s valuation to Rs.1000 crores. The other investors in the company include Tanglin Venture Partners Advisors, 3one4 Capital, and Better Capital AngelList Syndicate.

Founded in 2017, Open is solving business banking challenges faced by SMEs and start-ups. Open offers a business account in partnership with banks which helps businesses automate and run their finances effectively. This business account has all the tools that help businesses send and receive payments combined with the automated bookkeeping tool to integrate banking into their business workflows. The Open platform today has already grown to over 1 lakh SMEs and processes over INR 35,000 crores in transaction. The platform also adds over 20,000 SMEs every month, making it the fastest growing SME focused neo-banking service globally.

Open is gearing up for the launch of two new products to enhance its business banking proposition that includes a business credit card for start-ups called Open+ Card and a programmable bank account for developers called Layer.

The Open+ card is a business credit card that will be offered to venture-backed start-ups with a 30-day interest-free credit-line to help start-ups who are currently being ignored by traditional credit companies. The card comes with an integrated end-to-end expense management platform that enables businesses to issue physical or virtual cards to their employees with custom spend limits and seamless expense filing. Open is also enhancing its API banking suite with the introduction of Layer – a programmable bank account that will enable developers to control money programmatically, build their own features on top of the bank account and securely integrate with other services.

Commenting on the funding, Anish Achuthan, CEO – Open said, “Being one of the fastest growing SME neo-banking platforms in the world, the key is to match the ever-increasing customer demand for seamless financial management. For this, we have to scale up the technology and our team. This funding will help us accelerate our target of simplifying business banking for more than 1 million businesses at a greater pace and also launching new products like the Open+ card and Layer that will enhance our value proposition for small businesses”.