Smriti DixitThe fintech start-up Yap has raised US $ 10 million in series B funding recently that was collaboratively led by Flourish Ventures & Omidyar Network India.
MORE ABOUT YAP
The company was set up 6 years back ; by Madhusudanan R and Muthukumar A with a vision to help every business in its financial domain. It has established its headquarters in Chennai. It provides an application programming interface popularly known as API to banks, bidding entrepreneurs and the new internet companies in the market. The company is backed up leading fintech founders of the market like:
- Amrish Rau: CEO of Pine Labs
- Kunal Shah: Founder of CRED
- Jiten Gupta: Founder of Jupiter
- Abhishek Pant: Founder of fintech meetup
- Alok Mittal: CEO of Indiffi
The geographical space of the start-up is spread worldwide to countries like Nepal, UAE, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. The services currently are rendered to 20 leading banks of India like ICICI bank, Yes Bank and RBL Bank. Some consumer internet start-ups like Ola & Paisa Bazaar have also been in network in order to make the functionality more efficient.
CURRENT PORTFOLIO OF INVESTORS AT YAP
Yap has a lot of venture funds that have invested in the company from a very long time. They are Beenext, 8i, DMI finance and Better capital. The company resorted to a fundraising in the last year too. So, technically this is the second round also called as Series B funding. The existing investment players also played an important role in this round too. Let’s take a look at amount raised at two fundings:
SERIES A – US $ 4.5 million
SERIES B – US $ 10 million
PLAN AFTER FUNDING
The road ahead is not to very surprise of diversification & expansion.
Expansion to countries like Bangladesh, Oman, Egypt, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. The clear-cut target is to be of help to groups of firms who have recently added digitized services in their portfolio. A new set of efficiencies & competencies with an objective to tap the Asian market.
INVESTOR’S TAKE
The major funding ventures also had a take on why they are trusting on fintech sector that technically is not that firm in the present scenario. Their views will bring a more clear picture.
Anuradha Ramachandran, director at Flourish ventures said that “YAP is our first investment in embedded finance infrastructure in India, aligning with our principles of Fair Finance to foster a more inclusive economy,”
Amol Warange ,director at Omidyar Network also had a strong take underlining the fact that YAP will help in catalysing the global opportunity of financial inclusion and tapping the 500 million Indians who have not accessed the benefits of digitalisation till now. It would cater to their needs and provide them the needed security efficiently.
Technology has always been the driving force of nature; but the current space has been acquired by fintech as studies suggest that the market occupied by fintech would reach to Rs. 6,207.41 billion in next five years. It would target a growth rate of 22.7% making it a very lucrative market for the start-ups to grab the opportunity as soon as possible.