Bengaluru, Aug 24 (IANS): Leading fintech startup Khatabook on Tuesday said it has closed a $100 million Series C funding round led by US-based Tribe Capital and Moore Strategic Ventures (MSV), taking its market valuation to $600 million.
With fresh funds, Khatabook will focus on financial services disbursement through its software ecosystem, catering to 10 million monthly active MSMEs.
The company said that it plans to accelerate hiring to strengthen its engineering, product, design, analytics, and data science capabilities.
"The first phase of our journey was enabling digital transformation by building a tech ecosystem for Indian MSMEs. Now that we have created a widely accepted digital platform, the next step will be digitally-enabled financial services for small businesses," said Ravish Naresh, CEO, and Co-founder, Khatabook.
The start-up has expanded the ESOP pool, which now stands at $50 million.
"On this milestone for the company, we would like to acknowledge the contribution of employees and early investors through the ESOP buyback plan," Naresh added.
Other investors in the Series C round were Alkeon Capital, with continued investment participation from internal investors B Capital Group, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, RTP Ventures, Unilever Ventures, and Better Capital.
"Khatabook has successfully built such a network by empowering this seismic shift among MSME businesses to move from paper to digital, literally. Despite its large early success and fast adoption to date, the company is early in its path to power the segment," said Arjun Sethi, Co-Founder and Partner at Tribe Capital.
Amid the growing demand for technology solutions by the MSMEs, Khatabook experienced 150 per cent (on-year) growth FY20-21.
Currently, Khatabook, across all its software products, has over 10 million monthly active users.
The startup said it is buying back $10 million worth of ESOPs to acknowledge and reward employees, ex-employees, and early investors who contributed to the company's growth.
Eligible employees will be able to sell as much as 30 per cent of their vested options, it added.