Progcap, a provider of debt capital for underserved micro and small businesses, raised $40 million in an extended Series C round. The round that started in October last year included existing investors such as Tiger Global, Creation Investments and Sequoia Capital as well as new investor Google.
Progcap plans to use the funding to expand and accelerate product development, according to a press release. To date, it has raised over $100 million in capital and is valued at over $600 million, according to the Delhi-based startup.
Progcap is a financial technology company founded by Pallavi Shrivastava and Himanshu Chandra that digitizes supply chains and facilitates access to financing for last mile retailers.
By providing retailers with a range of flexible, customized capital solutions that match their business growth requirements as well as a host of other technology solutions, the company empowers them to increase profitability, manage cash flow, and expand their businesses.
Through its retailer financing platform, Progcap said it has already facilitated over 6,500 crores of credit, working with over 700,000 SMEs. On the back of very strong unit economics, it claims to have recorded disbursements of $1 billion on an annualized basis, which increased by 4 times year over year.
According to Progcap’s annual financial statements filed with RoC, the company grew its scale nearly 7X during FY21 to Rs 5.92 crore from Rs 85 lakh in FY20. During the period, the company managed to control its losses by 25.4% to Rs 5.42 crore from Rs 7.27 crore in the preceding fiscal year (FY20).
Google has been investing in Indian startups over the past few years and recently invested in ShareChat’s $255 million round and its rival DailyHunt. Previously, it backed neobanking startup Open, InMobi’s Glance, Dunzo, offline to online commerce and payments platform Dot, Freshworks, Drivezy, CarDekho, and Practo, among others.
Google announced that it would invest $1 billion in Bharti Airtel earlier this year. In 2020, it invested $4.5 billion in Reliance Jio which was a part of $10 billion worth fund announced by Google in the same year.