Aavishkaar Capital, others leads Rs 40 crore round in fintech startup Chqbook

Gurugram and Bengaluru-based Chqbook, a fintech startup that operates neobank for small business owners, today announced it has raised Rs 40 crore ($5.4M) in pre-Series B funding round led by existing investors Aavishkaar Capital and the Rajiv Dadlani Group.

Other investors, including Earlsfield Capital UK, reputed family offices, and high net worth individuals, including Jeremy Lim, Bhupesh Kumar, Nilesh Srivastava, among others also participated.

According to a statement, Chqbook will utilize the raised capital to ramp its user acquisition and strengthen its technology platform. Earlier in June this year, the fintech startup had raised $1 million in debt financing from InnoVen Capital.

Founded in 2017 by Vipul Sharma, Rajat Kumar, Sachin Arora, and Mohit Goel, Chqbook, through its neobanking platform, gives small business owners access to current accounts, bookkeeping services for cash transactions, credit, and insurance.

With over 1 million downloads, the startup claims to have over 650,000 transacting customers. The Chqbook app now processes over Rs 3,000 crore in annualized transaction value, it said.

"Through 2020, we built our multi-product stack and launched products which are now witnessing huge demand from the small business community. This has given us the confidence to double down and provide our customers access to banking, credit, and insurance," Vipul Sharma, Founder & CEO, Chqbook said.

He further said that Chqbook aims to lend over Rs 300 billion, open 1 million accounts, and insure 10 million customers, over the next few years. "Early days yet, but the accounts, credit, and insurance gap are so wide that the opportunity will require multiple players to join this movement," he adds.

Speaking on the investment, Rajiv Dadlani, said: “The founders having a strong pedigree and tremendous collective experience in the fintech, banking, insurance industry, have built a robust management team and are doing a splendid job."

"There is a huge, inherent and unmet need for Chqbook’s products amongst small business owners, all over India. We are very impressed with their holistic strategy of leveraging technology and being a multi-product and multilingual app, which is truly complementing," he added.

It competes with Open and PayO while Razorpay, through RazorPayX, is also emerging as one of the top neobanking platforms in the segment.

Also Read:

• Neobank startup Moneyhop raises $1.25M funding

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