Khatabook, an app that enables small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to record and track business transactions digitally, has raised $25 Mn Series A round from GGV Capital, Partners of DST Global, RTP Ventures, Sequoia India, Tencent, Y Combinator and others.
This makes a total of $29 Mn in funding for Khatabook since its inception in December 2018. The company plans to utilise it for scaling up its technology team and building new products. The round also saw participation from more than 20 prominent angel investors including the likes of Amrish Rau, Anand Chandrasekaran, Deep Nishar, Gokul Rajaram, Jitendra Gupta, Kunal Bahl and Kunal Shah.
Khatabook’s Motive: To Digitise India’s Shopkeepers
Khatabook is an app that enables SMEs to record and track business transactions in a safe and secure manner. It offers features such as sending periodic reminders to creditors on WhatsApp and through SMS and report generation which in turn helps them recover receivables in time and take prompt business decisions. The app helps small shopkeepers and kirana store owners in India manage their accounts by helping them track the money owed to them through the means of a digital ledger.
Khatabook was originally built by Vaibhav Kalpe. Kyte Technologies acquired the company in October 2018, with Kalpe joining the firm. Kyte Technologies was founded by Naresh, Jaideep Poonia, Dhanesh Kumar and Ashish Sonone.
Khatabook claims to have over 2.9 Mn active businesses on its platforms and over 5 Mn registered merchants. The app is available in 11 languages and also has a presence in Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Khatabook team plans to launch other products for micro small and medium enterprises in the coming months, according to the press statement.
“We are excited to partner with global investors to accelerate our vision of building the operating system/ technology plumbing for India’s small merchants and businesses,” said CEO and cofounder, Ravish Naresh.
“India is at an inflection point with dramatically low data costs leading to strong adoption of smartphones, especially amongst its millions of merchants. At Khatabook, we have taken early but significant steps towards leveraging this trend to digitize India’s shopkeepers. For most of our merchants, we are the first business software they have used in their entire life. And we will continue to build more India-first innovations to further enable the growth of what is still a largely untapped sector,” he added.
Khatabook was one of the 17 startups from the first cohort of Surge, Sequoia India’s rapid accelerator programme for early-stage startups in India and Southeast Asia. Y Combinator and Info Edge also are investors in Khatabook.
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