Mazumdar sees EnKash growing US$500+ billion market as businesses struggles to manage funds
Singapore-based White Ventures and Ascent Capital have joined Baring India in the US$20 million raised as part of Series B by EnKash, a Mumbai-based pioneer in unifying cards and spend management and features financial automation tools, enabling businesses to manage payables, receivables and expenses on the fly, powered by a DIY-Platform first approach.
“EnKash is unique in its vision to save teams’ time and money by building the future of the CFO suite. We were very impressed by the product-thinking behind the EnKash platform and also the leadership team,” said Sweta Rau from White Venture Capital.
The round also saw participation from existing investors, Mayfield India and Bengaluru-headquartered Axilor Ventures, EnKash said on 4 Apr 2022.
The much-needed disruption in the corporate spends management space has been witnessed globally as multiple startups targeting this space have sprung up. Ramp, Brex, Airbase, TripActions, Divvy and Jeeves in the USA; Pleo, Payhawk, Spendesk, and Soldo in the EU; and Nium and Spenmo in the Asia-Pacific region are some of the prominent companies in their respective geography, noted industry observers
“Expenses are just a tiny sliver of a company’s payables and expense management platform is just one software. Financial teams also need to manage statutory payments, supplier payments, payroll and reconcile bank accounts, often in different countries, resulting in an overwhelming amount of work,” said Naveen Bindal, co-founder, EnKash.
“Similarly, account receivables required paper or email-based invoicing, offline collections and hassled reconciliation. Our objective is to allow the customers to save time and money. We intend to cut short the cycles of manual work and processes while offering products and services in a completely DIY mode on our platform.
“The customer should not be hassled with multiple platforms, banking portals and manual coordination to get the right product,” explained Bindal.
EnKash was founded by veterans in the cards and payments space – Bindal, Hemant Vishnoi and Yadvendra Tyagi. Their deep knowledge with rich experience of more than 20 years each, primarily gained from working with large payment processing companies, banks and fintechs, allowed them to build the right product market fit in a short span of time.
The team partnered with SBM India to roll out its cards issuance business and forged healthy partnerships with banks such as ICICI, Axis, Kotak, HDFC and SBI to name a few. In December 2020, the team stitched together a strategic alliance with Mastercard, the leading global payment network processor.
Subhasis Majumder, partner at Ascent Capital, elaborated on what excited his team to partner with EnKash in their next phase of growth, “Businesses are struggling with archaic and disconnected systems to spend, track, process, budget and manage their funds.
“EnKash has stepped-up to democratize access to the best-in-class software and payments in India.
“We believe that EnKash is poised to continue leading this growing US$500 billion plus market, on the back of its comprehensive offering, impressive execution velocity, prudent capital allocation and experienced leadership team – a team with whom we have successfully worked in the past.”
“The pull of the product is evident in EnKash’s remarkable growth through referrals and word-of-mouth recommendations. Baring is excited to back this experienced founding team that has created a valuable proposition and is well positioned to gain disruptive growth in this untapped corporate payment market, both in India and overseas,” said Debanshi Basu from Baring India.
Mayfield India Managing Partner Vikram Godse continued, “Over the last few years, we have had a front row seat to the execution capabilities of the team at EnKash and they have done a phenomenal job at scaling the business. The metrics are there for all to see. We strongly believe that startups catering to the large Fintech market in India will create world beating products and this is exactly what the team at EnKash is building.”
“EnKash is working with an objective to offer better experiences and accessibility of financial and non-financial products for businesses. It intends to further expand its offerings with the infusion of fresh capital and lead the space with innovative offerings around banking-as-a-service, scaling up its ‘plug and play’ cards issuance stack and plans to expand its geographical presence on the international front,” said Vishnoi.
EnKash is close to 120 employees, having grown from roughly 30 employees two years ago while equipping itself to maximize the opportunity at hand. The startup, at present, boasts of processing annualized spends worth ~US$2 billion on its platform. Other key metrics that the Company tracks include 70K+ businesses and 500K+ issued cards – a distribution feat that the company has achieved in a supremely capital efficient way, having previously raised US$3 million from Mayfield and Axilor Ventures as a part of its Series A round in 2019. The company was seed funded by Axilor Ventures. fiinews.com
