Founded in 2019 by Kartik Jain, Amit Jangir, Pei-fu Hsieh, and Sunil Kumar, Karbon is an expense management platform for small businesses, enterprises, corporates and startups. The company said it aims to increase penetration into the startup sector to 70% from the current 30%.
“We have a product-market fit for our corporate cards in the Indian ecosystem and have already captured a substantial share of funded startups in India today. We aim to 10x our growth by the end of this calendar year by automating our key processes including business development, operations and customer success,” said Kartik Jain, co-founder, Karbon.
Karbon closed last calendar year with a monthly GTV of $30 million and expects to grow the GTV to $200 million per month in 2022 as credit demand picks up pace.
Surging investments in startups helped offset the fall in corporate spends that were impacted due to restrictions in mobility and Omicron wave-led constraints. The company has onboarded 2000 clients and provides corporate credit cards to small businesses and startups. Its card replaces personal credit cards for use by employees – companies give these cards to their employees for a variety of services, including meeting expenses related to travel, out-of-pocket costs, in the form of financial rewards, salaries, and other corporate use-cases. From the corporate perspective, these cards allow them to track expenses on a real-time basis.
Since its inception, Karbon has raised close to $32 million from marquee investors, including Y Combinator, Ramp, Rainfall Ventures, Olive Tree Capital, Harmony and Avenir Growth Capital. The firm, which counts Y Combinator as its early backer, said it use funds to step up product development, hiring plans and operations as it transitions into India’s first corporate Neobank this year.
Discover the stories of your interest
From small cash management, expense report automation, prepaid cards for business expenses, travel and expense management, employee flexible benefits, international travel cards to a digital marketing expense card, Karbon’s centralised platform, helps businesses improve their efficiency and productivity.
