FloBiz Raises $31 Mn Series B Round From Sequoia Capital India And Others The startup will deploy the capital for team expansion, product development, and scaling distribution
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Neobank for the growing Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) FloBiz, on Monday, announced to have raised $31 million in Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India, Think Investments, and its existing investors Elevation Capital and Beenext. The latest round also saw participation from renowned angels like Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm), Kunal Shah (CRED), Jiten Gupta (Jupiter), Amrish Rau (Pine Labs), Neeraj Arora (HalloApp), Nitin Gupta (Uni Cards), Ankit Tomar (Bizongo), Sayali Karanjkar (PaySense) and Krishnan Menon (BukuKas), along with 9Unicorns and Whiteboard Capital.
The capital will be deployed for team expansion, product development, and scaling distribution to serve more businesses. FloBiz will also focus on building additional technical capabilities within the organization, as it prepares to venture into financial services soon.
"SMBs form a large part of our economy and our daily lives. Everyone in the FloBiz team is driven by a deep passion to create an impact by powering growth of the small & medium businesses around us. It has translated into our thoughtful product development process and widespread customer obsession across the organization," said Rahul Raj, co-founder and chief executive officer, FloBiz. "In addition to our current investors, we're extremely thrilled to have Sequoia Capital India and Think Investments a long with such a stellar set of angels back us on our mission. This raise will help us accelerate projects which have been in the works up till now - building personalizable modules and features into myBillBook, diversifying core product offerings and preparing to roll out financial services. We have a slew of developments in the pipeline to further delight our SMB partners in the next 12 months."
FloBiz's flagship product myBillBook was launched in January 2020 to help SMB owners digitize invoicing, streamline business accounting and automate workflows of their enterprises. It helps maintain inventory, manage receivables and payables, and access important business reports to enable efficient decision-making. With over a million monthly active users, SMBs now record over $1 billion worth of transactions on myBillBook every month.
"Small businesses are the real heroes of our economy. In order to power the SMB economy with technology, one needs deep understanding, instinct and empathy for this audience. We are really impressed by the user-centricity, product focus, and experimentative approach of the FloBiz founders. There is almost a perfect founder market fit. The team is stoked to partner with FloBiz on their mission of building a neobank for the growing SMBs of India," shared Tejeshwi Sharma, managing director, Sequoia Capital India.
The company aims to launch the app in at least 5 more regional languages within the next 6 months. The product will also see deeper use of technologies like AI andimage processing to make the onboarding process for the less tech-savvy SMB owners in tier 2 and tier 3 cities of India a delightful first step to digital accounting.
"As consumers, most SMB owners are exposed to best-in-class apps and software products. With the rapid acceleration in digital adoption over the last 18 months, the need for business tools and software that match those high standards is more acute than ever – myBillBook is a leader in this segment. We are privileged to deepen our partnership with FloBiz as they continue to build myBillBook and more delightful SMB products and expand the FloBiz platform to become the neobank of choice for SMB owners," added Mridul Arora, partner, Elevation Capital.
With over 5 million downloads across the country, myBillBook app has a strong presence in regions like Maharashtra, Delhi NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, which account for more than half of its total user base.
FloBiz will continue to strengthen its presence in these regions while focusing on growth in others such as Bihar, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and West Bengal. To enable the fast-paced growth trajectory, FloBiz looks to triple its engineering, product and data teams within the next 6 months. Before the $31 million Series B capital raise, FloBiz had raised $10 million in Series A from Elevation Capital and existing investors in March 2021.
