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Khatabook

“Can a free digital ledger for India's 60M MSMEs become the distribution channel for embedded credit, insurance, and savings to Bharat's micro-merchants?”

Founded2017
HQBengaluru, Karnataka, India
FoundersRavish Naresh
Total raised~$185M+
Latest roundSeries C, 2021
Valuation~$600M (2021)
IndustryVertical SaaS / SMB Bookkeeping (India)
The story

Khatabook started in 2018 as a free Hindi-first digital ledger replacing paper bahi khatas for India's 60M+ MSMEs, hitting 50Cr+ downloads. The free utility was a Trojan horse for distribution: from 2021–2022 the company explicitly pivoted to monetising the merchant base via embedded financial services — lending (in partnership with NBFCs like Western Capital, LiquiLoans, Lendbox), insurance (Khatabook Insurance, IRDAI-regulated), digital gold, and SaaS subscriptions. The company is positioning itself as a distribution layer for financial products to Bharat's micro-merchants rather than a chartered fintech.

Last 12 months
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Product timeline
2018
Founded by Ravish Naresh as a digital bahi khata (ledger) app for Indian merchants· launch
2019
Reached tens of millions of merchants; raised $25M Series A from GGV, DST, Sequoia, Tencent, YC· funding
2020
Raised $60M Series B led by B Capital; began rolling out merchant payment collection (UPI/QR)· banking
2021
Raised $100M Series C at ~$600M valuation to launch financial services· funding
2022
Pivoted toward lending & SaaS as core monetisation tracks (ET Tech)· pivot
2023
Launched Khatabook Insurance (khatabookinsurance.com) covering shop insurance for MSMEs· insurance
2024
Launched gold investment product (Digital Gold via DGIPL — gold-terms.html)· wealth
2024
Launched lending marketplace partnering with RBI-approved NBFCs (Western Capital, LiquiLoans/NDX P2P, Lendbox/Transactree)· lending
The stack
3 layers disclosed in Khatabook’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Razorpay
Lending
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
4 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.