B Capital leads $60 million fundraise in fintech platform Khatabook

Bengaluru-based ADJ Utility Apps, which owns fintech platform Khatabook, has raised $60 million in a Series B funding round led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group. 

New investors Rocketship.vc and Unilever Ventures participated in the round, along with returning investors Sequoia Capital India, partners of DST Global, Tencent Holdings, GGV Capital, RTP Global, Hummingbird Ventures and Falcon Edge Capital. Angel investors Kevin Weil, Alexander Will, Kunal Shah, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal were also part of the round, according to a statement.

Khatabook, which provides a digital ledger application, allows micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and kirana store owners to track credit flow with consumers and suppliers. 

The company will use the fresh capital to develop technology solutions around financial services for MSMEs, it said.

In October 2019, the company raised $25 million in a Series A round from investors including Tencent and Sequoia, followed by an undisclosed amount from cricketer MS Dhoni in March 2020. 

Founded in 2018 by IIT Bombay alumni Ravish Naresh, Ashish Sonone, Dhanesh Kumar and Jaideep Poonia, Khatabook claims that eight million merchants use the app in 11 languages. Nearly a million merchants upload data on transactions worth $200 million on the app daily, the statement said. 

“Khatabook is playing an important role in the digitisation of MSMEs – a sector that forms the backbone of our economy... (It) helps (them) increase their income and makes them more efficient and competitive. We are looking to work closely with the government and financial institutions to strengthen Indian MSMEs,” founder Naresh, also the company’s CEO, said.

The startup was part of YCombinator and Sequoia Capital’s accelerator programme Surge.

“We have been tracking the company and are impressed by its product suite as it is addressing the critical pain points of merchants across credit tracking, revenue leakage and collections. We expect the number of digitally sophisticated MSMEs to double over the next three to five years,” Kabir Narang, general partner and co-head of Asia at B Capital Group, said in the statement.

The current fundraise has been in the works since February, according to media reports. It is one of the few large announcements in recent months, as the Covid-19 crisis has resulted in an economic slowdown.

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Khatabook competes with firms such as accounting automation platform OkCredit, which raised $67 million in a round led by Tiger Management and Lightspeed in September 2019, and Axilor Ventures-backed Vyapar, which raised Rs 36 crore in a round led by business-to-business online marketplace IndiaMart InterMesh.