BankSathi Raises $4 Million In Pre-series A Funding The funds will be used to invest in high-calibre employees across all the company's operations and to accelerate the development of new products and technology
By Teena Jose
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Bangalore based social ecommerce platform BankSathi has raised $4 million in funding from Kotak Securities, Lets Venture, We Founder Circle, Hem Securities and IPV (Inflection Point Ventures). The company has also received funding from Recur Club, Liquiloans, Sunil Singhania (Abakkus), Kunal Shah (CRED), Dr Ritesh Malik (Innov8), Kailash Biyani (Asian Markets), Mukul Rastogi and Bhaswat Agarwal (ClassPlus), Varun Alagh (MamaEarth), Sameer Rastogi (India Juris), Manish Dabkara (EKI Energy), and Mukund Modi (MS Fincap). The funds will be used to invest in high-calibre employees across all the company's operations and to accelerate the development of new products and technology. In addition, the organisation will invest resources toward growing both its agent network and geographic reach into new regions.
"People generally rely on their networks for recommendations, particularly when it comes to significant financial services. As a result, our distribution network of vetted agents provides the much-needed security to customers. We're keen to make a big contribution in the prime minister's mission 'Develop India by 2047' by increasing financial penetration through our tech empowered financial advisors. With this funding, we will be able to expand product, technology, and distribution network at a faster pace," said Jitendra Dhaka, founder and CEO.
BankSathi's advisor base has increased by 40 times and since the company's formation, advisors have earned more than 6 million by serving over 3 million customer base across 18,000 pin codes. In a span of 20 months of operation the company made an ARR of $10 million. The startup has employed top level executives in the last three months, and they plan to add more as they pursue future expansion and overcome the language barrier that impedes financial inclusion, by adding three more languages to the existing five languages in its application, claimed by the company in a statement.
"Today small and mid-sized financial advisors/micro-entrepreneurs are not able to directly work with financial institutions. BankSathi is enabling these micro-entrepreneurs to sell and earn extra income through selling financial products online and making themselves financially independent and educated," said Jaideep Hansraj, MD and CEO, Kotak Securities Limited
BankSathi is a social commerce fintech platform to empower consumers' financial life by providing right financial products access to last mile users that makes use of its network of agents to make recommendations for right financial products to its customers in tier 2, tier 3 cities and remote locations.