Karbon Card, a fintech offering corporate cards, has raised $12 million (INR 88.8 crore) in a Pre-Series A round from US-based fintech Unicorn Ramp, Rainfall Ventures, Roka Works, Y Combinator, and other global investors.
Ramp is a New York-based spend/budget management app or corporate charge card start-up that went on to become a Unicorn with a valuation of $3.9 billion in less than two years.
The startup plans to use the funds to step up its product development, hiring plans and operations. It expects to double its head count to 60 over the next 6 months.
Founded in 2019 by Pei-fu Hsieh, Amit Jangir, Kartik Jain and Sunil Sinha, Karbon was selected by Y Combinator in the Summer 2021 batch and had earlier raised $3.5 million from Orios Venture Partner and US-based 2AM VC.
Karbon’s Co-founder and CEO, Pei-fu Hsieh said, “We are solving a major challenge faced by Indian startups and small businesses while availing corporate cards from the banks that ask for 110 percent deposit guarantee, personal guarantees and massive amount documentation. Karbon’s corporate cards eliminate all these hurdles.”
Karim Atiyeh, Co-founder and CTO at Ramp said, “We are impressed with what Karbon has built so far and are looking forward to seeing them deliver more value for Indian SMBs and startups.”
The Bengaluru-headquartered company offers startups with four key benefits such as credit of up to Rs 5 crore with no personal guarantee or fixed deposits, provides seamless payments transactions through corporate cards to its customers, offers rewards specific to the startups' requirements such as AWS credits with $50,000 or SaaS products. It also helps offer expense management through WhatsApp in a very intuitive way.
The fintech, which makes money mostly off interchange fees, aims to solve a major problem for small businesses and startups by replacing the use of personal credit cards for company usage with corporate cards.
As the economy starts reviving, Karbon expects 35 percent month-on-month growth in the next 8-12 months.
