Indias Decentrothe Y Combinator-backed startup that helps companies enter the fintech market by deploying its APIs has raised $4.7 million in a Series A round.
The Bengaluru-based startup provides banking and payment APIs that allow the development of fintech products such as banking, payment cards, neo-banking and collection and withdrawal services in a short time. Decentro has partnered with numerous industry players including Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, Visa, RuPay, Quickwork, Equifax, Aadhaar and National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) to provide solutions for prepaid payment instruments, no code workflows, conversation banking via WhatsApp and enable document verification and KYC process.
“If a fintech startup or a company wants to bring a new product to the market, it takes at least a few months for it to hit the market. And it has to do purely with the banking processes, the way the bank carries out the process, but also with the bank’s technology. It’s not that great. That’s essentially the problem we’re solving,” said Rohit Taneja, co-founder and CEO of Decentro, in an interview with londonbusinessblog.com.
Taneja, who previously co-founded the social payment platform Mypoolin, which was acquired by Cupertino-based financial services firm Wibmo, and spent eight years in the fintech market, co-founded Decentro in 2020 with Pratik Daukhane – after he had personally faced all the problems he wants to address. He considers Setu, owned by Cashfree and PineLabs, to be one of the startup’s main competitors, but believes it differentiates itself with a “solution-driven enterprise customer base” and a “superior” product experience.
The startup has already gathered more than 250 clients in the commercial and fintech sectors. Some of these include Freo, Mobile Premier League, FamPay, CreditWise, Uni Cards, and BharatX.
Decentro, with more than 40 employees, offers products that enable companies to create virtual, corporate and escrow accounts, facilitate payments and make loans. The available products comply with the latest regulations in the country, according to the startup.
Decentro’s Series A round will be led by Rapyd Ventures, the venture arm of the British fintech-as-a-service giant, along with participation from Leonis VC and Uncorrelated Ventures. Indian angel investors including CRED founder Kunal Shah, Groww co-founder and CEO Lalit Keshre, Gupshup co-founder and CEO Beerud Sheth and former CBO of BharatPe Pratekk Agarwaal also participated in the funding round.
Taneja told londonbusinessblog.com that the startup plans to use the new funding to delve deeper into its partnerships with banks and introduce categories, including large enterprises. It also plans to acquire licenses and launch in Singapore to eventually expand beyond India.
“Building their innovation tier in India first gives Decentro an excellent foundation to build scalable innovations that can scale as other emerging markets modernize their own infrastructure. We are excited to support Decentro as they scale and expand,” said Joel Yarbrough, MD of Rapyd Ventures and Rapyd’s VP of Asia Pacific, in a prepared statement.
Before the latest funding round, Decentro had raised a total of $1.7 million in seed and angel rounds. The seed round, which closed in October 2020, included investments from Y Combinator and FundersClub.
Since then, the startup claims its valuation has increased by 3.3x and revenues have grown by more than 35x. However, Taneja did not disclose any details about the valuation.
Dcentro’s API transaction volumes have also grown by 50 to 70% each quarter since early 2021, with an average of 70 million annual API transactions recorded in the past 12 months. The startup is also profitable, the co-founder said.