Volopay Co Pte Ltd, a corporate cards and payable management startup backed by US investor Y Combinator, is gearing up for Indian forays and the company has raised $29 million (around Rs 218 crore) in a mix of equity and debt funding led by Winklevoss brothers for the same.
Based in Singapore, Volopay will launch India operations by April this year and the company also plans to launch operations in the Asia Pacific and the Middle East and North Africa regions. The company did not disclose the amount it plans to invest for India operations.
Volopay operates a platform that allows businesses to manage their money by providing a view of their financial health through modernization, automation, and enhancement of existing workflows and processes. The platform streamlines expense workflows while giving real-time visibility and control over business spending.
It incorporated a wholly-owned Indian subsidiary Volopay India Pvt Ltd in October last year with an authorized share capital of Rs 10,00,000, according to data available on Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA).
In an interaction with VCCircle, Rohit Bhageria, a founding member of Volopay, said that by December 2021, the company had begun background operations and legal formalities as it was looking to launch its product formally by April 2022.
Volopay is bullish on Indian forays as it sees India and Indonesia operations to contribute 60-70% to the company’s total revenue in the next three years.
Bhageria said that the company will initially launch operations in the top six metropolitan cities in India, which will include Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi. Volopay will then look to launch the platform in tier-2 and lower cities in the next months, Bhageria said, but added that he expects the top tier cities to contribute the most to Volopay’s revenue in the near term. Bhageria said that the Indian entity will employee over 100 people by the end of 2022.
“Our platform is more suitable to the startups, scale-up and midsized companies and so we would target the major tech and commercial hubs first. and in six months down the line, we will replicate the entire stack to tier two towns including Jaipur, Gwalior, among others. But initially our focus is on the tech and commercial hubs of the major cities,” said Bhageria.
However, Volopay, which currently has operations in Australia and Singapore, will have to make a few changes and structure its product differently for India and other geographies that it plans to expand to, said Bhageria.
Founded by Rajith Shaji and Rajesh Raikwar in 2019, Volopay said it aims to become a one-stop solution for cards, invoice automation, and bill payments. Volopay currently employees over 150 people in Singapore, Australia, India, Indonesia, and Philippines, the company said.
Some of its investors include JAM Fund, Accial Capital, Rapyd Ventures,Antler Global and VentureSouq.
Fintech veterans Jeffrey Cruttenden, Chief Exeucitive Officer of Acorns; Sweta Rau, Founder of White Ventures; Amrish Rau, Chief Exeucitve Officer of Pine Labs and Jitendra Gupta, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Jupiter are some of its angel investors.
Volopay counts Singaporean entities of CoinDCX, Livspace, MPL, InVideo, and MX Media, as its clients and Bhageria said that Volopay will also onboard the Indian entities of these companies once it formally starts Indian operations.
