Open hits $50m funding for SME banking
Indian fintech start-up Open, which offers business banking for SMEs and start-ups, has raised $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.
Open plans to use the funding to scale up the team, launch more products and expand its reach to a million SMEs in the next year.
It will soon launch its Open+ card, a business credit card with a 30-day interest-free credit line for venture backed start-ups; and Layer, a unique programmable bank account for developers.
The cart will target those businesses 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.
Founded in 2017, the firm currently offers a business account in partnership with banks which helps businesses automate and run their finances effectively, with an automated bookkeeping tool to integrate banking into their business workflows.
The firm claims to be adding over 20,000 SMEs every month.
Commenting on the funding, Anish Achuthan, CEO, Open says: “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.”
Open was founded by entrepreneurs, Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko and Ajeesh Achuthan along with ex-TaxiforSure CFO Deena Jacob.
Anish and Mabel’s previous venture Zwitch was acquired by CitrusPay in September 2015.
Open was founded in May 2017 and has previously raised investments from Beenext, Speedinvest, Recruit Japan, Unicorn India Ventures, DICE fintech.
