B2B fintech Enkash raises $20 million funding led by Ascent Capital

With this capital, the Mumbai-based company plans to scale up its ‘plug and play’ cards issuance stack and geographical footprint, as well as expand its banking-as-a-service offerings.

EnKash, a spend management platform and corporate card provider, has secured $20 million in a Series B round headed by Ascent Capital, with participation from Baring India and Singapore-based White Ventures. Existing investors Mayfield India and Axilor Ventures also participated in the round.

EnKash has been developing on a platform that unifies cards and spend management tools, allowing businesses to handle payables, receivables, and costs on the go, driven by a DIY-Platform first strategy. The fintech company’s goal is to provide companies with a better experience and access to financial and non-financial products.

With the infusion of new funds, it hopes to extend its offerings and roll out new products centred on banking-as-a-service, as well as scale up its ‘plug and play’ card issuing stack and increase its geographical footprint on the international front.

Naveen Bindal, Hemant Vishnoi, and Yadvendra Tyagi created EnKash after working with significant payment processing businesses, banks, and fintechs. To launch its card issuing business, the team collaborated with SBM India and has agreements with ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Bank, HDFC Bank, and State Bank of India, to mention a few. The squad formed a strategic relationship with Mastercard in December 2020.

“Expenses are just a tiny sliver of a company’s payables and expense management platform is just one software. Financial teams also need to manage statutory payments, supplier payments, payroll and reconcile bank accounts, often in different countries, resulting in an overwhelming amount of work. Similarly, account receivables required paper or email-based invoicing, offline collections, and hassled reconciliation. Our objective is to allow the customers to save time & money. We intend to cut short the cycles of manual work & processes while offering products & services in a completely DIY mode on our platform. The customer should not be hassled with multiple platforms, banking portals & manual coordination to get the right product,” said Naveen Bindal, co-founder, EnKash.

“Businesses are struggling with archaic and disconnected systems to spend, track, process, budget and manage their funds. A problem statement that resonates universally as evinced by the emergence of solution providers across the globe in the last couple of years. Similarly, in India, EnKash has stepped-up to democratize access to the best-in-class software and payments. We believe that EnKash is poised to continue leading this growing US$ 500 Billion plus market, on the back of its comprehensive offering, impressive execution velocity, prudent capital allocation and experienced leadership team,” said Subhasis Majumder, partner at Ascent Capital.

“The pull of the product is evident in EnKash’s remarkable growth through referrals and word-of-mouth recommendations. Baring is excited to back this experienced founding team that has created a valuable proposition and is well positioned to gain disruptive growth in this untapped corporate payment market, both in India and overseas,” said Debanshi Basu from Baring India.

Currently, the firm promises to handle annually spending of roughly $2 billion on its network with over 70,000 companies and over 500,000 issued cards. In 2019, the firm secured $3 million from Mayfield and Axilor Ventures as part of its Series A investment. Axilor Ventures provided seed funding for the startup.