Neo-bank Open onboards Tiger Global, Tanglin in Series B round

Neo-bank for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) Open Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd has raised Rs 210 crore ($30 million) in a Series B funding round led by New York-based investor Tiger Global Management. The other new investor in the round was Tanglin Venture Partners Advisors, a venture capital fund floated by former Tiger Global executives Ravi Venkatesh and Edwina Yeo.

The round also saw existing investors 3one4 Capital, Speedinvest, BetterCapital, and AngelList Syndicate, according to a statement from Open Financial.

This development comes more than four months after Open Financial raised Rs 32.40 crore ($4.6 million) from Beenext and 3one4 Capital in February.

The current investment is one of the many business-to-business bets placed by Tiger Global as part of its latest deal spree in the Indian startup space. 

Open Financial will use the current round to expand to 100 million SMEs over the next one year from its current user base of 100,000. It will also launch its business credit card product Open+ and programmable bank account for developers called Layer, which allows developers to make features on top of a bank account and manage it programmatically. The company is also in talks with non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) to get into lending.

“Being one of the fastest-growing SME neo-banking platforms in the world, the key is to match the ever-increasing customer demand for seamless financial management. For this, we have to scale up the technology and our team. This funding will help us accelerate our target of simplifying business banking for more than one million businesses at a greater pace,” said Anish Achuthan, chief executive officer of Open, in a statement.

The company was founded in 2017 by former PayU executives Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko, and Ajeesh Achuthan as well as former Tapzo finance chief Deena Jacob.