Open Raises Rs 210 Cr In Series B Round From Tiger Global

Bengaluru based, neo-banking start-up, Open, which offers a business banking service for SMEs and start-ups, has raised Rs 210 crore ($30 million) in a Series B round.

The funding was led by Tiger Global Management and saw participation from Tanglin Venture Partners Advisors. Existing investors 3one4 Capital, Speedinvest and BetterCapital AngelList Syndicate also participated in the round. The start-up has raised around $38 million so far .

The funding will be used to scale up the team, launch more products and value-added services, as well as expand its reach to one million SMEs in the next one year.

The start-up is immediately set to launch two new products to enhance its business banking proposition -Open+ card, a business credit card with a 30-day interest-free credit line for venture backed start-ups and Layer, a programmable bank account for developers. 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. Layer will enable developers to control money programmatically, build their own features on top of the bank account and securely integrate with other services.

“Being one of the fastest growing SME neo-banking platforms in the world, the key is to match 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 one million businesses at a greater pace. Our new products - Open+ card and Layer will enhance our value proposition for small businesses” said Anish Achuthan, CEO, Open Financial Technologies Pvt Ltd.

Founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneurs Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko and Ajeesh Achuthan along with ex-TaxiforSure CFO Deena Jacob, Open solves 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 helps businesses send and receive payments combined with the automated book-keeping tool to integrate banking into their business workflows.

The start-up claims that its platform has already grown to over one lakh SMEs, processing over Rs 35,000 crore in transactions. The platform is adding over 20,000 SMEs every month.