Tag: Rahul Raj

Business

FloBiz, neobank for Indian SMBs, raises $31 Mn in Series B from Sequoia Capital India, others

Sep 20, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #co-founder & CEO of FloBiz, #Elevation Capital, #Managing Director, #Mridul Arora, #Partner, #Rahul Raj, #Sequoia Capital India, #Tejeshwi Sharma

New Delhi: FloBiz, a neobank for the growing Indian SMBs, has raised $31 million in Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India, Think Investments and its existing investors Elevation Capital & Beenext. 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 organisation, as it prepares to venture into financial services soon.

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.

FloBiz’s flagship product myBillBook was launched in January 2020 to help SMB owners digitise invoicing, streamline business accounting and automate workflows of their enterprises. It helps maintain inventory, manage receivables & 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.

myBillBook, which is currently available in English, Hindi, Gujarati & Tamil, has consistently been a top rated app on Google Play Store under the Business category. 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 & image 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.

“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 & CEO of FloBiz. “In addition to our current investors, we’re extremely thrilled to have Sequoia Capital India & Think Investments along 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 personalisable modules & 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.”

“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,” said Tejeshwi Sharma, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India.

​“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 & more delightful SMB products and expand the FloBiz platform to become the neobank of choice for SMB owners”, said 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 & data teams within the next 6 months. Before the $31 Mn Series B capital raise, FloBiz had raised $10 Mn in Series A from Elevation Capital and existing investors in March 2021.

Business World

India’s fastest growing SMB digitisation startup FloBiz Raises $10 Mn from Elevation Capital and Existing Investors

Mar 24, 2021 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #Elevation Capital, #FloBiz, #Founder and CEO, #Managing Director, #Mridul Arora, #Rahul Raj

Hyderabad: India’s fastest growing SMB digitisation startup FloBiz has raised $10 Mn in a Series A round led by Elevation Capital. The latest round also saw participation from existing investors Greenoaks Capital and Beenext. The company, which offers a billing and accounting app myBillBook as its flagship product, intends to use the capital for team expansion, product development and accelerate sales and marketing efforts.

Driven by multiple tailwinds such as mobile/data penetration, GST compliance, technology adoption and lately Covid-19, historically dispersed SMBs (small and medium businesses) in India are getting more organised and formalised. While technology advancement and digitisation push has led to several transformations in the sector, essential software like custom ERPs and legacy accounting systems still come at a very high cost, require considerable technical know-how and prior accounting knowledge. The absence of affordable and easy-to-use solutions hinder the growth of SMBs significantly. FloBiz’s mission is to unlock this access and accelerate the growth of Indian SMBs through digitisation; in this endeavour the company has re-designed the complete user experience and created a superior software product.

“The MSME sector is the backbone to India’s GDP helping the country speed up to becoming a $5 trillion economy. Access to smartphones and internet penetration with affordable data plans have led to a rapidly growing demand for digital tools and products amongst small and medium business owners, who currently have to heavily rely on manual, paper-led processes. However, there lies a huge opportunity when it comes to providing end-to-end support and solutions to SMBs for managing their business seamlessly. We strongly believe that our product myBillBook empowers SMBs by automating their workflows, helps maintain inventory better, manage their receivables & payables and download critical business reports for quick and efficient decision making on the go. With this additional funding we plan to grow our trader base at least 7X by 2022 through deeply focused product developments driven by user feedback and making myBillBook simple to use through personalization” says Rahul Raj, Founder and CEO, FloBiz

Commenting on the announcement, Mridul Arora, Managing Director, Elevation Capital said “Digitisation of SMBs is an irreversible trend and we have been very impressed with FloBiz’s mobile-first, bottom-up product led approach to capture this opportunity. We believe that myBillBook is building for foundational, deep use-cases for this segment making the product indispensable to the SMB owners. We were very impressed with the customer love and the depth of usage of the product across the SMB value chain – retailers, distributors, wholesalers and manufacturers. The optionality opened by capturing deep users across the supply chain are enormous, and we look forward to partnering with the team as they execute on their extensive product road-map.”

The SMB sector in India is a broad, heterogeneous spectrum that includes small shops, large traders and regional manufacturers. The needs and pain points across the spectrum also vary significantly. For the micro segment, needs are largely limited to maintaining a ledger for debt calculation and accounting. However, for large businesses, use cases and needs are much more involved and deeper. FloBiz understands the diverse market and focuses on catering to businesses across the value chain. FloBiz’s flagship product myBillBook offers deep capabilities – recording several types of transactions (sales, purchases, expenses etc.), maintaining inventory, managing receivables & payables, building business reports (profit & loss, stock summary, sales summary etc.), providing multi-user access with permission controls and many more. The solutions bring complete accounting capabilities on a mobile interface which can be used by any small business owner in their regional language.

Prior to the $10 Mn Series A capital raise, FloBiz raised $3 Mn in its seed stage round in 2019. FloBiz is now a 60+ member team of talented individuals and has grown 12X in the last 6 months with 3M+ small and medium businesses on-boarded on the platform and $6B+ annualised transaction volume recorded. FloBiz’s flagship app myBillBook offers seamless WhatsApp integration which makes it possible to share invoices, POs, business reports etc. easily with other merchants, accountants and staff members. The app has been designed from a business owner’s perspective rather than an accountant’s, and is currently available in English, Hindi, Gujarati & Tamil.

Business World, News

Perfect Relations wins Communications mandate for FloBiz…

Feb 11, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #FloBiz, #Founder & CEO, #Mr. Dilip Cherian, #Rahul Raj, #the Co-Founder and Consulting Partner at Perfect Relations

Mumbai: India’s renowned Public Relations Consultancy, Perfect Relations which has market-leading practices in the fintech and start up domain, has won the Communications mandate for FloBiz – A Bengaluru based fintech start up and India’s first neo business platform that aims to accelerate the growth of small & medium enterprises through digitization.

Founded by IIT and BITS alumni, FloBiz has been incepted with the aim of digitizing small businesses in India and bringing elements of formalization into their fragmented operating processes. The start-up is driven by a team of hustlers who are driven by a single mission: to fuel the growth of those enterprises that fuel the growth of the economy. Backed by some of the most renowned venture capitalists and angel investors across the globe, FloBiz focuses on solving the biggest challenges faced by Indian MSMEs across India infusing technology to digitize the business & accelerate growth.

The mandate will take effect on 1st February. Perfect Relations will be managing the brand’s strategic PR, media relations, and reputation management across India.

On the appointment of the new PR team Rahul Raj, Founder & CEO, FloBiz | Building for Growth, Building for Bharat, said “Perfect Relations diversified experience across sectors and a deep understanding of the fintech industry makes them an excellent partner to drive our communications. Their approach towards the SMB space aligns with ours in a way that creates entrepreneurial synergies, and we are confident that it will give a remarkable boost to FloBiz’s brand, especially on our rapid growth journey.”

“FloBiz epitomizes the brand of new-age start-ups that offer simple solutions to challenges faced by small and medium enterprises across the country. Their work strengthens the core of our economy. We are delighted to partner with this transformational brand that is dynamic and rapidly growing. I am confident that as their partners we will help FloBiz achieve their growth ambitions” said Mr. Dilip Cherian, the Co-Founder and Consulting Partner at Perfect Relations

Perfect Relations will service the account out of its — wholly-owned offices across the country, supported by a network of — support offices covering all state capitals and principal markets. The firm plans to deploy around — people in various dedicated in the sectors and market-specialist teams to lead the account in Bengaluru Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kochi.

Founded in the early 1990’s, Perfect Relations was among the first agencies to introduce the concept of Image Management in India. The company advises CEO’s and country management teams on external communications, internal communications, and public relations. It has offices in 16 Indian cities, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka today and employs over 500 people, making it South Asia’s largest image management consultancy.

About FloBiz: FloBiz is a Bengaluru based Fintech start-up and India’s first neo business platform that aims to accelerate the growth of small & medium enterprises through digitisation. Founded in 2019 by IIT & BITS alumni, FloBiz is a fast-growing start-up backed by renowned global investors. The start-up is chasing the mission of digitisation to contribute to the building of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat by solving the most pressing problems of the Indian SMB sector.