The Busy Brains
2 Jun 2023
BharatNXT, a leading B2B fintech platform, raises $1.2 million in seed funding to fuel product development, expand the team, and enhance scalability. Learn how BharatNXT facilitates credit card payments for small and medium-sized businesses, improving cash flow management and driving growth in the B2B payment sector.
BharatNXT, a prominent player in the financial technology sector, has successfully raised $1.2 million in a seed funding round. The funding was led by Inflection Point Ventures, with participation from esteemed investors including Spiral Ventures, Keiretsu Forums, and Panthera Peak Capital.
The raised capital will be strategically allocated towards product development, allowing BharatNXT to enhance its offerings and cater to the evolving needs of businesses. Additionally, the funding will support a significant expansion of the team, quadrupling its size, and fortify the core technology to accommodate ten times the current growth.
A key focus for BharatNXT is the implementation of robust governance systems such as PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and ISO 9001. By integrating these top-notch standards, the platform aims to ensure optimal outcomes, introduce effective risk management practices, and maintain the highest levels of security.
Founded in 2022 by Aljo Joseph and Akshat Birla, BharatNXT provides a cutting-edge payment platform that empowers small and medium-sized businesses to conduct B2B transactions using credit cards. With credit extensions of 45-50 days, BharatNXT enables improved cash flow management for businesses, offering instant or T+1 settlements for various payment types, including GST, utility bills, and vendor payments.
Ankur Mittal, Co-Founder & COO of Inflection Point Ventures, said,
“Over the last decade, India has witnessed a significant rise in digital transactions across sectors. However, credit card usage has been low among Indian SMEs, with credit utilisation typically ranging around 15% to 20% of allocated limits. Entrepreneurs with good CIBIL scores that already have credit cards with pre-approved limits still don’t have easy access to formal credit to manage their working capital. This is where BharatNXT steps in and provides an avenue via their platform for these entrepreneurs to make business payments like GST, Vendor Payments, Utility, Rent and much more. This provides these entrepreneurs real-time and paperless access to precious credit at low costs, if timed well, while unlocking precious additional payment days based on their credit card cycles”
Till January 2023, The startup said that it facilitated payments of nearly Rs 50 crore for approximately 10,000 SMEs. Since then, It claims to have grown 30x and has processed approximately 4 lakh transactions, which involve at least 6 million backend computations with 100% accuracy.
Akshat Birla, Founder & CEO, BharatNXT, said,
“We have hit hockey stick growth, crossed Rs. 1500+ Cr in GTV and expect to be doing Rs. 1000+ Cr per month by the end of FY 23”. Aljo Joseph, Founder & CBO, is working towards diversifying revenue streams, building trust and stickiness with transacting customers, and believes “We should be running a profitable company in the next 2 quarters, and closing FY 23 with Rs 100+ Cr in revenue.”
Operating in an industry with immense growth potential, BharatNXT is well-positioned to capture a substantial market share. The market for credit card-based business payments is projected to reach $200-300 billion in the next three to five years, highlighting the untapped opportunities. Currently, only a small fraction, less than 2%, of the $1.4 trillion B2B spends are made using credit cards.
Moreover, there is a significant amount of unused credit limit on credit cards, with approximately $750 billion remaining unutilized out of the annual allocation of $900 billion. Interestingly, industry experts estimate that a considerable portion, around 25-30%, of these unutilized credit limits belongs to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). BharatNXT aims to unlock this potential and provide SMEs with access to the credit they need for growth and expansion.
With the infusion of seed funding and its innovative B2B fintech platform, BharatNXT is poised to revolutionize the payment landscape and contribute to the rapid digitization of business transactions in India.