TransBnk Secures $25M to Revolutionize Corporate Banking in India with Digital Single Operating System
Digital transformation has significantly reshaped consumer banking in India, yet corporate banking remains mired in outdated infrastructure, manual processes, and spreadsheet-heavy workflows. A three-year-old startup, TransBnk, aims to bridge this gap, having recently secured a $25 million investment from Bessemer Venture Partners to accelerate its progress.
Over the past decade, India has witnessed remarkable growth in consumer fintech, spearheaded by groundbreaking advancements such as the rise of digital payments via the government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and the expansion of payment aggregators. Despite these innovations, they have failed to significantly improve the corporate banking experience, particularly in transaction banking where manual processes still dominate for payments, collections, and even account statements. Businesses often grapple with multiple internet banking portals and rely on spreadsheets for reconciliation. This gap exists despite India being home to the world’s largest small and medium enterprise (SME) market, with nearly 75 million SMEs that could benefit greatly from modern financial infrastructure.
The untapped potential in corporate banking presents an attractive opportunity. India’s B2B fintech industry is projected to reach a market size of $20 billion by 2030, according to a February 2024 report by Chiratae Ventures and The Digital Fifth. The country already hosts 26 fintech unicorns with a combined market value of $90 billion, as per data analyzed by JM Financial last year. However, most of these startups have concentrated on innovations in payments and lending rather than core banking infrastructure.
Based in Mumbai, TransBnk was co-founded by experienced bankers Vaibhav Tambe, Lavin Kotian, Pulak Jain, and Sachin Gupta. The startup offers a “common operating system” – a single platform through which businesses can access the banking ecosystem. It provides a foundational layer of microservices, enabling use cases such as treasury, liquidity, and escrow management to be developed upon.
According to Tambe, co-founder and CEO, the team noticed a demand for a consolidated, single platform for transaction banking or corporate banking during their banking days. “The idea was that we could consolidate and integrate with multiple banks, creating a single platform,” said Tambe in an interview. “We thought we could offer this platform through various form factors such as web interfaces or mobile apps, or possibly SDKs and APIs.”
Founded in 2022, the startup currently collaborates with 60 banks, with 40 fully integrated into its platform to process transactions, payments, and even core functionality reconciliation. It also serves 220 customers, of which 80% are merchants, including lenders, fintechs, and non-bank financial companies (NBFCs), while the remaining 20% are banks that have white-labeled its software to provide corporate banking services to their customers.
Globally, companies like Finastra, Temenos, and Infosys’ Finacle are modernizing banking through software platforms. In the U.S., players like Treasury Prime offer embedded banking solutions for enterprise customers. However, startups in this domain remain scarce in India.
Building for this space necessitates a deep understanding of banking infrastructure – integrating with legacy core banking systems and linking them to enterprise stacks such as ERPs and treasury platforms. It also requires close relationships with banks to access and utilize their data and workflows.
Over the past year, TransBnk reports significant growth, with revenue increasing more than 12x to around $12 million in annual recurring revenue. The startup claims profitability after taxes since February and healthy gross margins of approximately 80%. The company facilitates around 110 million transactions monthly, covering 11,000 bank accounts and utilizing over 1,500 APIs.
The Series B funding round, which includes $4 million in secondary shares, also saw participation from Fundamentum, Arkam Ventures, 8i Ventures, Accion, and Japan’s GMO Venture Partners. The startup plans to extend its operations beyond India and enter markets such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, continuing to build its infrastructure platform layer. It also aims to broaden its reach to sectors including real estate, pharma, and renewable energy, according to Tambe.
With the latest funding, TransBnk has raised around $26 million in total. Its valuation increased 7x from the last round, Tambe stated without disclosing specific figures.
