INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Even as tens of millions of Indians have come online for the first time in recent years, most businesses 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 is helping them digitize their bookkeeping and accept online payments just raised a significant amount of
capital to expand its operations.Khatabook, a Bangalore-based startup, said on Tuesday it has raised $25 million in a new financing round
The Series A round for the startup was funded by GGV Capital, Partners of DST Global, RTP Global, Sequoia India (Khatabook was part of its
Surge accelerator program), Tencent and Y Combinator
The startup has raised $29 million to date.A clutch of high-profile angel investors also participated in the round, including Gokul Rajaram
PayU, Anand Chandrasekharan (formerly with Facebook), Deep Nishar of SoftBank, Jitendra Gupta of LazyPay, Kunal Bahl of SnapDeal and Kunal
Shah of CRED.Khatabook operates an eponymous Android app that allows micro, small and medium-sized businesses to keep a digital log of their
financial transactions and accept payments online
The app, which was launched on Google Play Store in December last year, has amassed 5 million merchants from more than 3,000 cities, towns
and villages in India, Ravish Naresh, co-founder and CEO of Khatabook, told TechCrunch in an interview this week.The app, which supports 11
languages, was used to process transactions worth more than $3 billion in the month of August, said Naresh
Most merchants in developing markets are currently not online
Ambani, upended the Indian market and brought tens of millions of Indians online for the first time in the last three years, most
businesses in the country are still carrying out their operations without the use of any technology, said Naresh
In six months, the app has helped businesses recover $5 billion in previously unpaid credits, Naresh claimed
property startup Housing, said Khatabook will use the capital to build new features such as billing and invoicing to serve merchants
In the next 12 months, Khatabook aims to add 25 million businesses, he said
The app currently does not charge merchants, but Naresh said the startup will introduce some additional features in the future that will
enable monetization of its user base.A growing number of startups and major giants in India are attempting to help businesses
OkCredit, which raised $67 million last month, serves 5 million merchants
IndiaMART, a 23-year-old B2B firm that went public this year, led a round in a startup called Vyapar last month that is addressing similar
New Delhi-based BharatPe raised $50 million in late August to help businesses accept digital payments.Last month, Google unveiled a version
than 60 million small and medium-sized businesses, however only a fraction of them support digital payments
product manager for Google Pay, at the time.
