FINTECH STARTUP, KHATABOOK RAISES $100 MILLION IN ITS SERIES C ROUND & BUYBACK ESOP’S WORTH $10 MILLION.
2 years ago Rituka M
Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises play a crucial role in the Indian economy & have been growing at a significant pace. Although the penetration of technology & the internet among the MSMEs remains on the lower front. Bringing digital tools to the MSME ecosystem, Khatabook empowers these enterprises to transform themselves digitally. In its Series C funding round, this digital bookkeeping app, Khatabook has raised $100 Million from US-based VC firms Tribe Capital and Moore Strategic Ventures (MSV), with oversubscribed participation from Alkeon Capital, internal investors B Capital Group, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, RTP Global, Unilever Ventures, and Better Capital. Additionally, Balaji Srinivasan, & Sriram Krishnan participated as independent investors, among others. With a valuation nearing $600 Million, the Bangalore-based startup intends to buy back $10 Mn worth of Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP), where eligible employees will be able to sell as much as 30% of their vested options.
Having been originally founded by Vaibhav Kalpe in 2016, Khatabook was acquired by Kyte Technology in 2019, where Kalpe joined the founders’ Ravish Naresh, Jaideep Poonia, Dhanesh Kumar, and Ashish Sonone to develop this revolutionary product & transform the MSME space. After their flagship product, Khatabook (allows SME owners to track & record money owed to them through a digital ledger), the company has expanded to launch 3 other products, Biz Analyst (a SaaS business management solution integrated with the Tally ERP9 to offer premium services like sales and purchase reports, livestock updates, and other MIS reports), Pagarkhata (a staff management platform for businesses to digitize staff attendance, payroll/wages, attendance updates, leaves, payments, etc.), and Cashbook (an exclusive digital solution for cash sales and expense management).
With an active user base of over 10 million on a monthly basis, with their merchants managing over 264 Mn customers, the startup intends to utilize the latest funds towards hiring new talents, & venturing into the financial disbursement space, i.e., digitally fostering lending, payment, and deposit-related efficiencies in the MSME space. Speaking on the investment, Arjun Sethi, Co-Founder & Partner, Tribe Capital said, “At Tribe, we believe strongly in the power of the network effect and how it can create moats for businesses. Khatabook has successfully built such a network by empowering this seismic shift among MSME businesses to move from paper to digital, literally. Despite its large early success and fast adoption to date, the company is early in its path to power the segment. We’re thrilled to be a part of its growth as it leverages its network to build additional scale.” Adding further, James McIntyre, Senior Managing Director & COO, MSV, said, “We are excited to partner with Khatabook as they continue to provide millions of small & medium-sized retailers in India with outstanding software products. This round will accelerate the growth of technology products with which Khatabook’s customers can better serve Indian consumers. Additionally, this round enables the launch of a next-generation financial services platform to escalate the growth of those same customers.”
Khatabook is currently hiring talent across various roles including engineering, product, design, analytics, and data science functions. Find out if you’d make the right candidate & enable MSMEs to transform digitally.
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