OkCredit Lands VC To Digitize India SMB Bookkeeping

Banglaore-based startup OkCredit revealed that it has raised $67 million in a Series B financing round.

The round was led by Lightspeed and Tiger Global, and follows a Series A in June. So far two-year-old OkCredit has raised a total of $83 million. It plans to use this latest funding to expand its business in India, including hiring more people, growing its merchant user base and building more products for merchants.

OkCredit offers a mobile app so that merchants can track their day-to-day purchases and sales. Last month, the company’s founders told reporters that the app had more than 5 million active merchants across 2,000 cities in India, including roadside vendors to grocery shop owners and pharmacies. And Amy Wu, a partner at Lightspeed US, said OkCredit’s active users have grown 76 times since the beginning of the year.

“It’s one of the fastest-growing companies we’ve seen and reflects the incredible virality and network effects of the business,” she said.

However, while more than 500 million users in India are online, most merchants in the nation still use large notebooks to keep track of their transactions.

“Technology has moved from collecting payments in cash, to using point-of-sale machines. More recently, QR codes, paper bills turned to printed bills. But the one thing that has not changed is the fact that most customers still purchase goods on credit recorded in a notebook,” Harsh Pokharna, chief executive of OkCredit said in a statement.

In a statement, Harsha Kumar, a partner at Lightspeed, said, “technology adoption in India will happen across sectors and segments. For the longest time, mSME as a segment was ignored but we have seen through Udaan, OkCredit and other Lightspeed investments in the SME space that tech usage is growing rapidly. Very excited and honored to have a front row seat in this journey!”