Fintech startup Khatabook is looking to turn EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) profitable over the next 18-20 months, a senior company official said.
The Bengaluru-based startup has now started monetizing its platform. It will now focus on scaling its digital lending and financial services offerings while also increasing the subscriber base for its paid SaaS (software as a service) service offerings.
The company claims to have conducted a successful pilot for digital lending, which is now available in all major metros and tier-1 cities in India, said Ravish Naresh, Co-founder and Chief Executive, Khatabook, in an interaction with VCCircle.
“The lending pilots have been fairly successful, in terms of our cost structure. We have shifted from paid growth to organic growth. We are adding 600,000 installs monthly and this is happening organically,” Naresh said.
Most micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) focused services companies are adding a credit layer to their offering to increase margins and to appeal to a larger customer base.
Currently, Khatabook’s annualized gross revenue stands at Rs 70 crore, with the majority of it coming from its software offerings. “By next year, we expect a 50-50 mix in revenues between financial services and software services,” Naresh added.
Asked whether the overall slowdown in business environment has affected it's services business, Naresh said they are not witnessing a slowdown at ground level mainly because of the pent-up demand created by COVID in the last two years.
Khatabook raised $100 million from Tribe Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures and others in August 2021 at a valuation of $600 million. In total, Khatabook has raised about $187 million so far. Its other notable backers include Tencent, DST Global Partners, Y Combinator, B Capital, Alpha Wave Global (formerly called Falcon Edge Capital), among others. It also announced an ESOP buyback worth $10 million in August last year.
In May last year, the company raised $60 million in a Series B round led by B Capital. In October 2019, it raised $25 million in its Series A round from Tencent, US-based GGV, Sequoia India, Y Combinator, RTP Ventures and partners of DST Global.
Naresh said that the company is not looking to raise fresh capital anytime soon. On the current basis, Khatabook has a funding runway of up to 4 years.
Khatabook was set up in 2018 by Naresh, Dhanesh Kumar, Jaideep Poonia and Ashish Sonone.
In November 2021, Khatabook shut down its digital online storefront for kiranas—MyStore. MyStore provides micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with a platform to do online business.
"We are an experiment-driven start-up. We have developed a strong understanding of MSME business and financial behavior with our scale of offerings, and now we are well positioned to enable financial service offerings suitable for the segment. We are consolidating all our SaaS offerings under the Khatabook and Biz Analyst platforms and building Finserv/digital lending on top of SaaS," he said.
