Google-backed Neobank Open becomes India’s 100th unicorn with new funding

Neobank startup Open on Monday announced that it has entered the unicorn club with a new funding round that values it at $1 billion. With this, the startup has become India’s 100th unicorn.

The new round was led by Mumbai-based investment firm IIFL and existing investors Tiger Global, Temasek and 3one4 Capital also participated in the round, the company said in a statement.

🦄 The Indian startup ecosystem just hit a century today!
We are super excited to become the 💯th Unicorn from India. 🥳

But before that here’s the #Unicorn🧵summarizing our journey so far👇 pic.twitter.com/FsfSOpK5Bp

— Open Money (@BankWithOpen) May 2, 2022

“We see a lot of synergies with IIFL especially on leveraging the lending book, as we are getting ready to launch innovative products like revenue-based financing, early settlement, working capital loan and business credit cards to SMEs on our platform,” said Anish Achuthan, co-founder and chief executive of Open.

India Hits A Century In Style! 💯

Bengaluru-based startup become country’s 100th Unicorn.🦄

India = Ideas + Innovation + Investmentshttps://t.co/KcNQMIEokA

— Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) May 2, 2022

Open caters to over 2.3 million SMEs, is processing $30 billion in annualised transactions. The startup, which has partnerships with over a dozen top banks in India, is used by more than 2.3 million businesses.

The new products include Open Flo – an innovative revenue-based financing product for ecommerce businesses, Open Settl – early settlement credit offering, and Open Capital – working capital lending offering for SMEs.

Open, which has raised about $187 million to date, is aiming to unveil three new products, revenue-based financing Flo, early settlement card offering Settl and working capital lending Capital soon.

The neobank platform startup is aiming to disburse $1 billion through its new products.

Open Financial Technologies Pvt Ltd was founded in 2017, and offers a neo-banking platform that integrates all the tools used by small businesses and integrates it with the business current account.

As the third largest fintech ecosystem in the world after the US and China, the Indian fintech market is poised for further disruption with the emergence of neobanks.

Overall, Indian startups raised more than $10 billion during the first quarter of 2022, up from $5.7 billion in the same period in 2021, according to data from Venture Intelligence.

The January-March quarter also saw as many as 14 startups becoming unicorns.

(With Inputs from IANS)

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