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Early-stage payments startup goDutch has raised $1.7 million in a seed round led by venture capital firm Matrix India along with investors including Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital, and VentureSouq.
High profile angel investors such as Justin Mateen, co-founder of Tinder, Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, Rohan Angrish, head of ICICI Labs and Sumon Sadhu, an investor in ClearTax, are also part of the funding round, the company said in a press release.
The Mumbai-based company has been co-founded by three IIT Bombay graduates Aniruddh Singh, Riyaz Khan and Sagar Sheth and specialises in splitting and real-time settlement of group payments on its platform through a card linked to the app.
While the card, issued in partnership with CSB Bank, is currently virtual and can be accessed through the goDutch application, co-founder Sagar Sheth said that the team is currently working to issue physical cards as well for users. The app went live earlier this month.
Sheth, who is also the CEO of goDutch, said that the freshly infused capital will be used for expansion of the team and further development of the platform.
“While many existing apps allow recording of group transactions, none of those enable seamless peer-to-peer settlements or real-time splitting,” said Rajat Agarwal, director, Matrix India. “It’s a real pain point for young adults and if solved well, the product has the potential to grow virally.”
US-based Venmo, which is owned by PayPal, is the biggest group payments player globally. Spiltwise, its competitor in the US, records group transaction logs in India, but doesn’t offer real-time settlement functionality for users.
Sheth said that the startup is targeting 50 million users across tier 1 and 2 cities that make up $75 billion worth of group transactions annually.
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