Neo-banking startup Open bags multi-crore investment from Google and Temasek

Founded in 2017, Open is solving business banking challenges faced by SMEs and startups. It offers a business account in partnership with banks
Team Open. (Photo | Special Arrangement)
Team Open. (Photo | Special Arrangement)

KOCHI: Bengaluru-based fintech startup Open, Asia’s first neo-banking platform for SMEs and start-ups, founded by Malayalees Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko, Ajeesh Achuthan and Deena Jacob, has bagged the Rs 735-crore investment from Google and Temasek. 

Open bagged the investment, which was led by Temasek along with Google and SBI Japan, in the Series C round. Tiger Global and 3one4 Capital, which have already invested in the startup, too have expressed their interest in making fresh investments in the Series C round. 

According to the founders, the investment will go into strengthening Open's position in the SME Neo Banking sector besides increasing the clientele from the present 20 lakh SMEs to 50 lakh along with making its presence felt in the South Asian countries.

"The fund will also be used to improve Open's new services like Switch, embedded finance platform, cloud native and banking stock," said the founders.  

According to Anish Achuthan, CEO and co-founder, in the past four years, they have become the top neo-banking platform in the world. "More than 20 lakh SMEs in India are using our services and we are planning to scale up the numbers to 50 lakh SMEs by concentrating more on embedded finance and enterprise banking. The aim is to achieve the target by August 2022," said Anish.

Founded in 2017, Open is solving business banking challenges faced by SMEs and startups. It offers a business account in partnership with banks, which helps businesses automate and run their finances effectively. This business account has all the tools that help businesses send and receive payments combined with the automated book-keeping tool to integrate banking into their business workflows.

According to Pranav Pai, founding partner, 3one4 Capital, they were happy with the service and technological expertise Open has when it comes to providing world-class financial solutions to SMEs. "Hence we are happy to continue our business relationship with Open," said Pranav.

Tiger Global, Speed Invest, Beenext, Recruit Strategic Partners, Angelist, 3one4 Capital, Unicorn India Ventures and Tanglin Venture Partner are leading global venture capitalists who have invested in Open. 

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