Payments startup GoDutch has secured $1.7 million in a funding round led by Matrix Partners. Apart from Matrix, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital, VentureSouq, and top angel investors such as Justin Mateen (Co-founder, Tinder), Kevin Lin (Co-founder, Twitch), Rohan Angrish (Head, ICICI Labs) and Sumon Sadhu also participated in the round.
How many times have you went out to catch a bite with your friends, and fought over the bill? With goDutch, you can, well, go dutch, without the hassle of dividing who owes what. Moreover, it allows users to pay directly through the platform. It allows users to instantly settle group transactions such as rent payments, travel, shopping, dining out, home delivery, etc and settle the payments directly on the platform.
The company is co-founded by Aniruddh Singh, Riyaz Khan, and Sagar Sheth who wanted to simplify payments amongst friends. From being just a platform to help friends sort out payments, the company has now set up much higher ambitions. goDutch is targeting $75 billion worth of group transactions annually coming from more than 50 million Indians across Tier 1 & 2 cities.
“While many existing apps allow recording of group transactions, none of those enable seamless peer-to-peer settlements or real-time splitting. It’s a real pain point for young adults and if solved well, the product has the potential to grow virally,” said Rajat Agarwal, Director at Matrix India.
Sagar Sheth, Co-founder and CEO, goDutch said “As young millennials, a large part of our lives are spent with different groups such as flatmates, office colleagues and friends we go out with. We’ve built goDutch so that you can truly enjoy your group experiences and create amazing memories without stressing over how to manage the group expenses.”
And that indeed, is a darn big pain point. And while settling expenses with complete strangers (flatmates, colleagues etc.) is still okay, things get difficult when it comes to friends and family. And that is because of the social factor that comes in with such folks.
Aniruddh Singh, Co-founder and COO, goDutch said “Our group experiences are affected by awkward hassles in settling expenses with our friends. We tackle this intricate social problem in one swipe of the goDutch card and provide our customers with a quick & effortless experience in these tricky situations.”
To get a goDutch card for free, which is issued in partnership with CSB Bank, the customer can simply sign up on goDutch’s app and get access to their virtual card. Physical cards can also be ordered through the same app.
