Fintechs Bimaplan, Bueno Finance, DigiSparsh raise capital; Early investors exit Paymatrix

Coverplan Technology, the parent operator of insurance technology brand Bimaplan, on Tuesday said it had raised $2.5 million as part of a bridge round of funding dubbed pre-Series A. Investors included Amino Capital, Goodwater Capital, Acequia Capital, and EMVC. 

The round also saw participation from angel investors - Gokul Rajaram of Doordash, Arjun Sethi of Tribe Capital, Ashish Dave of Mirae Asset Venture Investments and others. Existing investors RaSa Future Fund, Dream Incubator, 2am Ventures, Samyakth Capital, and Shanti Mohan and Nimesh Kampani of Letsventure also participated in this round.

The Bengaluru based startup has so far raised $3 million. Founded in November 2020 by Vikul Goyal, it had raised $500,000 in a seed round in early 2021 from Y Combinator, FinSight Ventures, Kunal Shah of CRED, Jitendra Gupta of Jupiter, and others.

Bimaplan, has seen a 4x growth in the number of daily customer leads since inception, will use the funds raised to build the team, product, and ramp up distribution.

“Insurers are still selling a version of the same lifestyle insurance products to the lower income demographic that they sell to the affluent segments of the population. This lack of customization is why insurance penetration has remained low in our target segment. At Bimaplan, we understand our users’ perception of risk and create products mitigating that risk, and this is what we endeavor to build at scale,” Goyal said. 

Prior to Bimaplan, Harvard Business School alumnus Goyal sold his first entreprenieual venture Carcrew to TVS in 2020, worked at Craftsvilla.com, Happyfresh.com, Burger King, and Bessemer Venture Partners in India. 

Bueno Finance 

Bueno Gig Credit Building Technologies, parent operator to fintech brand Bueno Finance, on Tuesday said it had raised $3 million in a seed round of funding led by Goat Capital and JAM Fund.  Olive Tree Capital, Good Water Capital, Kunal Shah, Anupam Mittal, among others, were other investors. 

The Gurugram based Y-Combinator startup was founded in October 2019 by Saurav Gandhi and Sandeep Arora. Bueno Finance is credit-focused neobank for middle and lower-middle income segments in India. 

“Only 10% of the formal credit (mostly secured) goes to 45% households of India earning approximately $200-$400 a month. Bueno Finance wants to democratise credit along with other financial services to this massive segment,” founder and CEO Gandhi said.  

Gandhi and team will use the funds to expand the company’s product offerings and hire across engineering, product, sales, credit and operations domains. 

Goat Capital was founded in 2020 by Twitch founder Justin Kan and Robin Chan with over $100 million under management. The duo’s previous investments include Gingko Bioworks, Ramp Financial, Razorpay, Scale.ai, Square, Twitter, Uber, Xendit, and Xiaomi. 

DigiSparsh 

Mumbai based fintech startup DigiSparsh on Tuesday said it had raised an undisclosed amount on funding in seed stage from Menlo Park based fund GoAhead Ventures. 

Founded in May 2020 by Saurabh Soni and Akhilesh Gandhi in May 2020, DigiSparsh offers lending solutions including insurance receivable financing, supplier financing and patient financing in the healthcare space. It ties up with healthcare aggregators to source the end customers. DigiSparsh has so far tied up with seven aggregators, onboarded 14 hospitals, and has funded loans to patients, pharmacies and healthcare merchants in over 50 locations in India, as per a statement. 

“With this funding, we plan to strengthen our team and also widen our reach - targeting to tie up with 50 aggregators, on-board 100 hospitals by the end of this year and 500 hospitals by the end of the next year," founder and CEO Soni said. 

DigiSparsh’s eponymous platform is built on micro services and blockchain to easily on-board borrowers at the front end & lending partners at the back end, founder and CTO Gandhi added. 

While Soni has worked with groups like GE, Tata Teleservices, Idea Cellular, and Essel, Gandhi has worked with companies like Tech Mahindra, Sandisk and Federal Bank of San Francisco. 

GoAhead Ventures, founded by three Stanford alumni with over $100M in AUM, focuseson early-stage technology companies around the globe, deploying roughly half of its capital outside of the United States into geographies including India, Singapore, Israel and others. 

Paymatrix 

Hyderabad based early-stage investment firm SucSEED Angel Network and IIIT Seed Fund have successfully exited from their investments from city-based fintech startup Paymatrix, as per a joint statement on Tuesday. 

Paymatrix has secured an investment from Muthoot Pappachan Group or Muthoot Blue in exchange of a 54% stake and exit to existing investors in the company. 

The deal, terms of which were undisclosed, will help Muthoot navigate its business into the digital payments segment. The acquisition was a combination of primary and secondary share purchases. 

“The investment from Muthoot Pappachan Group will help build capabilities and reach out to non-credit card holders, who share a similar pain point to that of credit card holders. We look forward to leveraging the experience of Muthoot Blue in lending business...” Paymatrix founder and CEO Mukesh Chandra Anchuri said.  

Paymatrix’s investors include Xseed venture partners, IIIT-H seed fund, IIIT-H foundation, SucSEED Angel Network, and SmartCity Dubai. Founded in 2016 by Anchuri, Muralidhar Nayak Guguloth and Anusha KP, the company lets users pay their property rent, rent deposit and maintenance payments online using credit cards, with a credit-free period of 45-50 days. 

With an userbase of over 82,000, Paymatrix has processed Rs 200 crore of transactions so far. It has also partnered with platforms such as 99 Acres, Bajaj Finserv, apart from co-living and co-working spaces. The transaction volume on Paymatrix expanded 30x over the period of the financial year ended March 2021, SucSEED Angels Network co-founder and manging partner Vikrant Varshney said. 

Over 2019 and 2020, Paymatrix diversified into facilitating payments beyond property rental payments. It now enables individuals to pay for all their large ticket monthly expenses such as rent, tuition fees, maintenance, vendor payments, among others, on credit cards without the need of point-of-sale at the recipient. In 2020, it also expanded its proposition to facilitate start-ups and small businesses to use their corporate credit cards, purchase cards, and business cards to pay business expenses. The launch of the offering resulted in the expansion monthly gross payment value of 800% within 12 months.