Bengaluru-based SME-focussed neo-banking platform Open has raised $50 million in Series D round at a valuation of $1 billion, Economic Times reported. The funding round was led by IIFL Finance along with participation from existing investors Temasek, Tiger Global and 3one4 Capital participating in it. The fund infusion makes Open the 100th unicorn to emerge from India’s startup ecosystem.
The latest round comes just six months after Open raised $100 million led by Google, Temasek, Visa, and Japan’s SoftBank Investments. The platform will use use the new capital and IIFL Finance’s strategic expertise to build out a lending business, Economic Times reqoprted quoting the people aware of the plans. At present, the company competes with the likes of Jupiter, Razorpay X, Niyo, among other competitors. The development comes just seven months after Open announced its Series C funding at $500 million valuation. Open has raised about $187 million to date. India’s overall fintech market is estimated to grow at a pace of 31% CAGR to $1 Tn by 2025. Of this, around 47% is expected to account for lending.
Founded in 2017 by former PayU and Citrus Pay executives Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko and Ajeesh Achuthan, along with Deena Jacob, Open operates a neobank that offers small and medium-sized businesses as well as enterprises nearly all the features of the bank with additional tools to serve the needs of a business. Through its business servces account, the company offers services like digital banking, payments, invoicing, and automated bookkeeping services. pen is also one of the rare unicorns with two women co-founders.
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The Open has partnership with over a dozen top banks in India and powers close to 2.3 million SMEs and processes over $30 billion in annualised transactions. The platform also adds over 90,000 SMEs every month, making it the fastest growing SME-focused neo-banking platform globally.
