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India’s Decentro, a Y Combinator-backed startup that helps companies tap into the fintech market by deploying its APIs, has raised $4.7 million in a Series A round.
The Bengaluru-based startup offers banking and payment APIs to develop fintech products such as banking, payment cards, neobanking and collections and payment services in a short period of time. Decentro has partnered with several industry players including Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, Visa, RuPay, Quickwork, Equifax, Aadhaar and National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) for prepaid payment instruments, codeless workflow, chat banking. Enable document verification and KYC process via WhatsApp.
“Whenever a fintech startup or a company wants to launch a new product in the market, it takes at least a few months to launch. And it’s just related to the bank’s processes, the way the bank manages the process and the bank’s technology. It’s not great. That’s basically the problem we’re solving,” said Rohit Taneja. Co-founder and CEO DeCentro said in an interview with TechCrunch.
Taneja, who was previously acquired by Cupertino-based financial services company Wibmo and spent eight years in the fintech market, co-founded Decentro in 2020 with Pratik Dhaukan, the founder of social payments platform MyPulin — after going through all the trouble personally. He wants to talk to you. Owned by Cashfree and PineLabs, it sees Sesetun as key competitors for the startup, but believes it will differentiate itself with a “solutions-driven enterprise customer base” and a “superior” product experience.
The startup has gathered more than 250 customers in the business and fintech sectors. Some of these include Freo, Mobile Premier League, FamPay, CreditWise, Uni Cards and BharatX.
With a headcount of more than 40 people, Decentro offers products for companies to create virtual, business and fictitious accounts, enable payments and make loans. The available products comply with all the latest regulations in the country, the startup said.
Series A round Decentro led by Rapid Ventures, a UK fintech-as-a-service giant, with participation from Leonis VC and Dysfunctional Ventures. Indian angel investors Kunal Shah, founder of CRED, Lalit Kesher, founder and CEO of Growth, Birud Sheth, founder and CEO of Gupshup and Bharatpe Prateek Agarwal, former CBO, participated in the philanthropic round.
Taneja told TechCrunch that the startup aims to deepen its new funding partnership with the bank to enter categories including large enterprises. He is also planning to get a license and start in Singapore and finally pass through India.
“Building their innovation footprint in India first gives Decentro a great base to build innovation that can be scaled as other emerging markets update their own infrastructure. We are excited to support Decentro as they continue to grow and expand,” said Joel Yarborough, Rapid Ventures MD and Rapid VP Asia Pacific, in a statement.
Prior to its latest funding round, Decentro had raised a total of $1.7 million in seed and angel rounds. The seed round, which closed in October 2020, included investments from Y Combinator and FundersClub.
Since then, the startup’s valuation has increased by 3.3X and revenues have grown more than 35X. But Taneja did not reveal anything about the speculation.
Since early 2021, Dcentro’s API transaction volume has grown 50 to 70 percent every quarter, with an average of 70 million annual API transactions recorded over the past 12 months, he said. The startup is also profitable, said the co-founder.
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