ItzCash, a Mumbai-based finance technology company, has raised ₹800 crore in its latest funding round. The investment comes from US-based Ebix, a global insurance SaaS company. With this, the company’s existing investors — Matrix Partners, Intel Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, have exited.
As per the reports, Ebix has acquired 80 percent stake in the company, thus giving Itzcash the valuation at $150 million. Essel Group will own the remaining 20% stake in the company. In a statement, Robin Rana, CEO at Ebix, said,
In ItzCash, we found attributes that none of their peers had – market penetration across 3000 cities, 75000 + brick & mortar distribution outlets, CAGR of approximately 35%, and the only company who was profitable amongst all its peers. With one of India’s most prominent business houses, the Essel group deciding to align their interests with Ebix, the decision to invest in ItzCash became easy for us.
The company, which was founded in 2006, had so far raised about $51 million from Matrix Partners, Intel Capital and Lightspeed. Its managing director Naveen Surya said that the investors received returns between 3x to 4x on their initial investments. He said,
This partnership with Ebix will help us to deepen our foray into all kinds of financial services such as credit, insurance, healthcare and investments to accelerate our growth momentum, even outside India.
ItzCash claimed that it turned profitable in the financial year 2016-17. While the company initially started with prepaid card and wallet products, it has expanded into businesses such as remittances, financial services and corporate products. It also provides cloud-based solutions at about 75,000 stores across 3,000 cities and towns, wherein the kirana store also enables bill payments and money transfer.
Going forward, the company will look at new partnerships, including investments, joint ventures and acquisitions. It recently invested in Bengaluru-based fintech startup Finly, which works on expense management for corporates. Naveen also said that the IPO plan is still open. He added that “will now discuss with our new partners on when to go ahead with it”.
With this investment, ItzCash believes that it will allow the company to cater to Ebix clients beyond India and open cross-selling opportunities to sell each other’s complementary services to clients.
The Nasdaq-listed Ebix Inc. is a global supplier of on-demand software and e-commerce services to the insurance, financial, e-governance and healthcare industries. It is currently operating in 40 countries, including India.
