Exclusive: Accel, Matrix co-lead $7m round of Indian fintech firm

Nakad, an India-based fintech startup, has raised US$7 million in a seed funding round co-led by Accel and Matrix Partners India.

Team Nakad / Photo credit: Nakad

AdvantEdge Founders and a few angel investors including Razorpay founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar participated in the round. Zetwerk founders Amrit Acharya and Rahul Sharma also joined the fundraise.

Nakad, which means cash in Hindi, was set up in January by Ujwal Kalra, Sambhav Jain, and Avinash Uttav.

Kalra and Jain – Nakad’s CEO and COO, respectively – are former employees of US-based Boston Consulting Group. Uttav worked with firms like Oracle and Samsung before joining Nakad as CTO.

The startup focuses on making it easier for MSMEs to access working capital financing. To facilitate this, the company has built a proprietary solution called MicroBill. Its architecture “tokenizes invoices which then flow across the entire supply chain,” the company said in a statement.

MicroBill will help Nakad tap into what it estimates to be a US$30 billion market. The startup has also partnered with a few banks and non-bank financial companies, but  it did not reveal their names.

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Nakad plans to use the capital to further improve its solution and scale operations in India. It will also increase its workforce from 13 to 70 by the end of 2022, Kalra told Tech in Asia. The new hirings will be across verticals, including business development, tech, finance, and legal.

The CEO added that Nakad will explore markets outside India, which are facing similar credit-related issues.