Vayana Network secures Rs 283 crore in Series C funding round

Trade finance platform Vayana Network on Thursday said it has raised Rs 283 crore in funding from Chiratae Ventures, CDC group and others. The Series-C round also saw participation from Jungle Ventures, March Capital, Marshall Wace and some of the large family offices from India and abroad, a statement said. Vayana had previously raised USD 9 million.

Vayana said it will continue to invest heavily in developing a wide variety of products for every member of the supply chain; improving our reach globally to enable access and reduce the cost of funds for the smallest of businesses. The company will invest in setting up the International Trade Finance Services (ITFS) platform at GIFT City. It is also looking at acquiring startups in a similar space to bolster its product offering.

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Over the last 4 years, we have grown 20x on quarterly financing volumes and have reached USD 8 billion in total financing to date. But more than these numbers, we have always defined our role as enablers who provide access to affordable and convenient finance to every member of the supply chain,” Vayana Network founder and CEO Ram Iyer said. He added that there is a need to be a relevant product that allows the business to grow sustainably.

“Given our strong presence in credit enabling infrastructure such as GST and e-invoicing coupled with the launch of our Good Business Score (GBS), we have managed to reach the smallest of businesses, connecting them to the largest lenders…we have some incredible global financial institutions, development institutions and growth funds, strengthening us to accelerate our journey to this goal, Iyer said. Vayana creates supply chain finance programmes that help in lowering credit costs and improving coverage. Its compliance business, which consists of GST Suvidha Provider (GSP) services holds over 20 per cent market share of e-invoicing in India.

The analytics business (GBS) helps customers to monitor the health of their business. Vayana recently received in-principle approval to set up an ITFS platform at the GIFT City (Gujarat). Vayana Network has enabled finance of over USD 8 billion, including over a billion-dollar of finance through B2B card flows to over 22,000 MSMEs for over 1,000 supply chains in 25 different sectors. It connects over 1,000 corporates and their trade ecosystems to provide access to credit for their payables and receivables. It has processed over 1.7 million transactions.

Its network spans 600 cities and over 1,150 pin codes in India and extends to 20 countries across the globe. Our vision is to create an ecosystem where financing is embedded in a transaction and becomes an almost invisible part of any B2B trade — as simple as swiping a credit card. With our existing and upcoming suite of products, we will solve related challenges such as market discovery, effortless compliance and monitoring, helping every business in a supply chain operate at its best, Iyer said.

TC Meenakshi Sundaram, MD and co-founder of Chiratae Ventures, said across the globe and especially in India, MSMEs play the crucial role of being growth engines of an economy; despite which they suffer from delayed payments and lack of access to low-cost formal sources of finance. “Vayana not only facilitates access but has worked towards making MSMEs credit ready through its GST compliance and analytics business. In Vayana, we have found the right partner to provide a solution for cash flow based lending, while simultaneously helping small businesses grow sustainably, Sundaram said.