Aavishkaar invests $5 mn in fintech startup Chqbook

Nineroot Technologies, which owns and operates online marketplace portal Chqbook, has raised $5 million in Series A round of funding from Aavishkaar Capital, the venture capital arm of Aavishkaar Group.  

The Gurugram headquartered company will deploy the fresh capital to expand its product portfolio, scale up distribution and strengthen its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology platform, it said in a statement.

“Backed by a strong founding team, we are building India’s first marketplace bank and will be the financial control center for small business owners,” Vipul Sharma, founder and CEO, Chqbook, said.

Founded in 2017 by Sharma, Sachin Arora, Rajat Kumar and Mohit Goel, the platform helps small business owners with financial products such as credit cards, insurance and lending. The app offers over 60 products and claims to have served over two lakh customers across 20 cities, the statement added. 

Sharma has over 17 years of product, portfolio and business development experience across banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sectors, with stints at IndusInd Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank and ICICI Prudential Life.

Kumar has more than 18 years of experience in sales and distribution with stints at IndusInd Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. 

Arora has worked for 19 years in the technology and customer experience segment in companies such as Amazon, Myntra and Trilogy. 

Goel has 21 years of experience in sales and marketing across the insurance, mutual funds and telecom sectors, with stints at Hutch (Vodafone), ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, Tata AIG General and Exide Life (ING Vysya).

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The company said its year-on-year revenue has seen an eight-fold growth in FY20.

In May last year, the company raised an undisclosed amount of capital from cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle.

In October 2017, it raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Startup Buddy and a clutch of individual investors. Individual investors who participated in the round include head of corporate marketing at HCL Technologies Apurva Chamaria, former Myntra chief technology officer Sachin Arora, Net Asset Consulting founder Bharat Gupta and Singapore-based private equity professional Amit Manocha.

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This month has already seen multiple investments in the fintech space.

Sequoia Capital India, the Menlo Park, California-headquartered venture capital firm’s local investing arm, led a $5.5 million investment into student loans financing platform Leap Finance. 

Y-combinator-backed tax filing and investment platform ClearTax acquired asset management platform Karvy’s goods and services tax (GST) filing business for an undisclosed amount.

Digikredit Finance, which owns fintech platform SMEcorner, raised $30 million in a mix of Series B preference shares and debt capital led by private equity firm Paragon Partners.

Last month, Flipkart-owned fintech platform PhonePe secured $60 million in a fresh round of capital infusion from its Singapore headquartered parent company, taking the overall funding it received from the parent entity to $236 million in the financial year 2019-20. In the same month, Venture capital firm GGV Capital also led a $30 million investment round in the Bengaluru-based online gold loans marketplace Rupeek Fintech.