Fintech is a portmanteau of the expressions “money” and “innovation” and alludes to any business that utilizes innovation to improve or automated monetary services and processes. The term incorporates a quickly developing industry that serves the interests of the two buyers and organizations in more ways than one. From portable banking and protection to digital currency and venture applications, fintech has an apparently unending exhibit of utilizations. The industry is immense — and will keep on extending for quite a long time to come.
According to CB Insights, there are 41- VC backed fintech unicorns worth a combined $154.1B. Here are the top 10 Fintech Indian Startups in India which are extending the boundaries.
- BharatPe
Digital payments startup Bharatpe has been upping its game in the fintech landscape. The startup claims to have 40 lakh merchants across 35 cities in India. In 2019, the startup claimed to have grown by 30 times. It currently accounts for a total payment volume of $3.5 billion. The three-year-old startup has raised a total of $142.5 million so far. In June 2021, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued an In-principle approval to Centrum Financial Services Limited to establish a Small Finance Bank (SFB). with Bharatpe. Till March 2021, It has expanded its network to 100 cities across India, including tier 2 and 3 cities. In June 2021, They acquired PAYBACK India from American Express and ICICI Investments Strategic Fund. It did not disclose the transaction value. In August 2021, BharatPe changed its leadership and elevated Suhail Sameer as the CEO from group president and Ashneer Grover as the MD.
2. Khatabook
Khatabook, just like its literal meaning in Hindi, is an account book for small and medium businesses. The business app helps business owners keep a check on their accounts, digitally. The startup claims to have 8 million merchants on its platform and said that “1 Million merchants are uploading data and engaging with the Khatabook app daily while adding $200 Million worth of transactions every day. High engagement and utilization of the platform has resulted in more than 25% of the total active merchants joining the platform through word-of-mouth and referrals.”
3. ZestMoney
Founded in 2016 by digital finance and technology professionals, Priya Sharma, Lizzie Chapman, and Ashish Anantharaman, the company is backed by leading global digital financial services investors like PayU, Ribbit Capital, Omidiyar Networks among others. The consumer lending startup aims to enable users who have no access to credit cards or any other formal financing options due to insufficient credit history. The startup has raised over $56 million so far.
ZestMoney is a growing consumer lending FinTech company that uses digital EMI, without the need for a credit card or a credit score. The company believes that being able to pay in EMI should be available to everyone and not only those who hold a credit card or have a credit score. With the use of mobile tech, digital banking, and AI, ZestMoney was made accessible to millions of Indian consumers.
4. Juspay
Juspay is a developer of an online platform designed to be used for mobile-based payments. The company’s online platform is a SaaS layer on top of payment gateways to simplify integration, improve robustness and ease the management of diverse and rapidly evolving payment options, enabling users to make electronic transactions securely and efficiently. The eight-year-old payments technology firm helps simplify the payment processes for merchants. The full-stack payments solution startup claims to have a 4 million daily volume of transactions. The startup has raised $27.4 million so far.
5. Niyo Solutions
Niyo is a personal finance management startup. Founded in 2015, the startup has over 800 employees and has raised $49 million in funding. At Niyo, the team is focused on creating banking that is simpler, smarter and safer for our customers by simplifying finance with technology.
Niyo partners with companies (employers) and banks to offer employees the opportunity to access their benefits, such as healthcare or food allowances, through a digital platform. That includes a mobile app for submitting claims and the option of a credit card.
6. KrazyBee
KrazyBee Services Private Limited is a Non-Deposit taking Non-Banking Financial Institution (NBFC) registered with the Reserve Bank of India. KrazyBee is founded by a group of experienced entrepreneurs and finance professionals with an aim to tackle some of India’s most pressing challenges in the lending space by offering a unique proposition through the use of innovative new generation technology and the availability of credit. With a vision to be the primary choice of credit for the borrowers in India, KrazyBee operates 24×7 and has tied up with the financial technology platform to cater for the various needs of the borrowers. With the strength of continuous innovation and raising the benchmark through the years, KrazyBee has provided credit to more than 2.2 million satisfied borrowers with the disbursement of more than INR 43 billion.
7. Zerodha
Zerodha Broking Limited is an Indian financial services company offering retail brokerage, currencies and commodities trading, mutual funds, and bonds. Founded in 2010, the company is headquartered in Banglore Valued over $1 billion, it is the largest brokerage firm in India by active client base.
Zerodha offers brokerage free equity investments and trading platforms to retail investors. It has its headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Zerodha has 900+ employees and a revenue of $64 Mn (2017-18). It was founded in the year 2015. Zerodha is a private company. Nithin Kamath and Nikhil Kamath are Co-founders of Zerodha. After launching in the year 2015, Zerodha has remained a bootstrapped venture.
8. PhonePe
PhonePe is an Indian digital payment and financial services company headquartered in Banglore, India. PhonePe was founded in December 2015, by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer. The PhonePe app, based on the UPI, went live in August 2016. The PhonePe app is available in over 11 Indian languages. Using PhonePe, users can send and receive money, recharge mobile, DTH, data cards, make utility payments, pay at shops, invest in tax saving funds, liquid Funds, buy insurance and mutual funds and gold. In addition, PhonePe also allows users to book Ola rides, pay for Redbus tickets, and book flights and hotels on Goibibo through the Switch platform. PhonePe is accepted as a payment option at over 17.5 million.
9. Bill Desk
Bill Desk is an online payment services company with its headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. IndiaIdeas is the parent company of Bill Desk. Bill Desk has 400+ employees and revenue of $132 Mn (2017-18). It was founded in the year 2000. Bill Desk is a private company.Karthik Ganapathy, Ajay Murthy, and M.N Srinivasu are Co-founders of Bill Desk. After launching in the year 2000, Bill desk has raised a total of 241 million USD over 4 funding rounds.
On 31st of August 2021, Naspers (via Prosus) announced that an agreement has been reached between PayU and the shareholders of the Indian digital payments provider BillDesk to acquire BillDesk for $4.7 billion.
10. Mobikwik
Mobikwik is one of the largest mobile wallets and one of the largest Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) players in India. Digitally paying users have been rapidly growing in India in the last decade, but the credit card penetration in the country is still only 3.5%. We are focused on addressing the unmet credit needs of the fast growing digitally paying users by combining the convenience of everyday mobile payments with the benefits of BNPL.
Founded in 2009 by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku, we commenced operations as a mobile wallet to make digital payments convenient for our users. Our use cases have since expanded to include bill payments, ecommerce shopping, food delivery, petrol pumps, large retail chains, pharmacies, kirana stores, etc. Our platform also enables peer-to-peer payments via unified payment interface (“UPI”), MobiKwik Wallet as well as MobiKwik Wallet to bank payments. Over the years we have amassed over 101 million Registered Users and more than 3 million ecommerce, physical retail and biller partners.
11. Paytm Payment Banks
Paytm was established by Vijay Shekhar Sharma and is possessed by One97 Communications and is authorized by RBI. Paytm has many partners such as Uber, BookMyShow, Foodpanda, MakeMyTrip and many more. Its investors include Softbank, Ant Financial, AGH Holdings, SAIF Partners, Berkshire Hathaway, T Rowe Price, and Discovery Capital.
The company partnered with Alibaba’s cloud computing arm – ‘AliCloud’ to expand its payment network at a global scale. They have investors like Berkshire Hathaway, SoftBank Group, and MediaTek and even raised an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata in March 2015. It is arguably the biggest fintech company in India.
12. CRED
CRED is a fintech startup that offers rewards to customers who use its platform to pay their credit card bills. The startup is committed to safeguarding the data and information of its members. It functions on the guiding principle of opt-in consent and full transparency. CRED’s security processes and technology applications unified with regulatory compliance enables it to access, store, and utilise user data.
Founders: Kunal Shah, Founding Year: 2018, Headquarters: Bengaluru, Karnataka, Funding received: US$ 256.5M
Investors: General Catalyst, Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital India, Hillhouse Capital Group, Coatue, DST Global, Ribbit Capital, RTP Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks Capital and 16 other investors.
13. LendingKart
Lendingkart is an online financing company founded by Harshvardhan Lunia and Mukul Sachan in 2014. Lendingkart Finance offers working capital loans and company loans to small and medium-sized businesses throughout India. They provide capital fully online, a fast process with minimal documentation and no collateral necessary. The goal of the company is to make capital funding accessible at their fingertips so that entrepreneurs can concentrate on business instead of thinking about their cash-flow gaps. As of now, they are based in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, and Mumbai, but work across India.
14. Razorpay
Razorpay is a payment solution in India that helps companies with its suite of products to receive, process, and disburse payments. It gives you access to all payment modes, including JioMoney, Mobikwik, Airtel Money, FreeCharge, Ola Money, and PayZapp, including credit card, debit card, net banking, UPI, and common wallets. It was started by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar in 2014. Businesses can handle the marketplace, simplify money transactions, receive regular fees, exchange client invoices, and take advantage of working capital loans from a single platform.
15. Pine Labs
Pine Labs is a fintech platform that provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology to merchants. These solutions are aimed at helping merchants increase their revenue, reduce expenditure, complexity, and risk. The startup connects financial establishments and consumer brands to enable merchants to deliver value to their retail customers. Its cloud-based platform powers 3,50,000+ POS terminals spanning 3700 cities and towns in India and Malaysia. Over 1,00,000 merchants across the electronics, food and beverage, fashion, airlines, and other industries use Pine Labs’ solutions. The Pine Labs’ platform claims to be associated with over 15 major banks, 7 financial organizations, and 100+ brands.
16. Policy Bazaar
PolicyBazaar was founded in June 2008 in Gurugram by Yashish Dahiya, Alok Bansal, and Avaneesh Nirjar. Policybazaar.com is now India’s largest insurance aggregator and one of the world’s top fintech players. The online platform originated as a website for price comparison and a knowledge source to learn about insurance and related programs. It later grew to become an insurance policy marketplace. The revenue for the organization is created by the fees paid for the promotion and advertisements of insurance providers on its website.
17. Instamojo
In September 2012, Sampad Swain, Akash Gehani, and Aditya Sengupta co-founded Instamojo. Instamojo collects fees, creates free online stores, ships goods, get loans, and more to boost your business. Micro-entrepreneurs, start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses are using Instamojo to start, market, run and expand instantly, using our suite of services such as payments, free online stores, logistics, credit and finance, and more through mobile and web platforms. Instamojo allows personalized business tools to help a business expand on the Internet.
18. Groww
Groww is an investment platform that has invented a new way of investing money with stockbroking and direct mutual funds. Its platform provides insights about mutual funds, efficient investment planning, equity-linked savings, and everything from the personal finance world, simplifying the investing process for new investors. Users can also invest in gold and US stocks through the Groww platform. The startup was also a part of Y Combinator’s winter 2018 batch.
Founders: Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal, Lalit Keshre, Neeraj Singh, Founding Year: 2017, Headquarters: Bengaluru, Karnataka, Funding received: US$ 59.2M
Investors: Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, K50 Ventures, Insignia Ventures Partners, Propel Venture Partners, Friále, Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Cypher Capital, David Langer and 5 other investors.
19. Cashfree
Cashfree is a payment and banking technology startup that enables Indian enterprises to collect payments online and make disbursements. It has so far helped 50K businesses with payment collections, vendor payouts, salary and instant loan disbursements. Its clients include renowned internet companies such as Cred, BigBasket, Zomato, HDFC Ergo, Ixigo, Acko, Zoomcar, and Delhivery among others.
Founders: Akash Sinha, Reeju Datta, Founding Year: 2015, Headquarters: Bengaluru, Karnataka, Funding received: US$ 40.9M. Investors: Y Combinator, Smilegate Investment, Apis Partners, Vellayan Subbiah, George Osborne.
20. OPEN
OPEN develops and provides an online space for banking and intercompany settlement. It offers digital banking services to startups and SMBs (small and medium businesses) that provide digital bank accounts which include a current account integrated with tools for bookkeeping, invoices, moving money, and accessing credit. Its API interface platform lets financial organizations merge banking and payments into their applications and accounting systems.
Founders: Anish Achuthan, Founding Year: 2017, Headquarters: Bengaluru, Karnataka, Funding received: US$ 7.4M
Investors: Speedinvest, BEENEXT, AngelList, 3one4 Capital, Recruit Strategic Partners, Kishore Ganji, Unicorn India Ventures, Jitendra Gupta, Amrish Rau, BetterCapital AngelList syndicate, ISME ACE – FinTech Accelerator.