Fintech startup Zeni is able to provide $34 million to provide SMBs with their financials in real-time.
Zeni A Palo Alto fintech company that provides live financial data in real time to venture-backed startups has raised the sum of $34 million in Series B financing, which was led by Elevation Capital.
The latest investment comes six months since Zeni revealed $13.5 million in funding in its combination Series A and seed round. Zeni has since attracted $47.5 million since it was founded in 2019 by the twins Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde.
Elevation was joined in the latest round by two new investors, Think Investments and Neeraj Arora, along with current investors Saama Capital, Amit Singhal, Sierra Ventures, Twin Ventures, Dragon Capital, and Liquid 2 Ventures. In the course of the investment, Ravi Adusumalli, founder and managing partner of Elevation Capital, will join Zeni’s board of directors.
The Shinde siblings launched the business following the sale of their previous company, Mezi, a travel agency which was acquired by American Express in 2018. Zeni’s AI-powered financial concierge platform provides bookkeeping, accounting, tax, and CFO services, allowing you to manage the costs of these services for a monthly fee that starts at $299 for a month. Founders can access real-time financial information through the Zeni Dashboard. This includes Zeni Dashboard data such as cash out and in operating expenses, annual financial projections, and taxes. They can also download financial data from each “slice” that they want.
In the initial Series A/seed round that year, the company had around $200 million of funds per month. And the amount has increased to over $500 million, as CEO Swapnil Shinde said to TechCrunch. Its clients range from businesses that are in prerevenue to those that generate more than 100 million dollars in annual revenue.
Snehal Shinde, chief product officer, explained that in addition to cash in and cash out cash flow analysis, the company created an online search feature for spending and transactions as well as income trends for each client and supplier.
Zeni saw a 550% increase in revenues year-over-year. Meanwhile, Zeni’s customer base expanded by 375% due to organic growth and referrals, Swapnil Shinde said.
Despite the increase in the market, the Series B was an unexpected surprise for the brothers. The company was “very well capitalized,” with the bulk of the previous round being in circulation, Swapnil Shinde said.
But Zeni began receiving so many inquiries from people who declared it too exciting to not share. particularly with the addition of Elevation Capital’s investment. Shinde explained that the deal was attractive since the firm had been an investor with Paytm as well as knowing “how to partner and build unicorns.”
The funds will be used for expanding and enhancing the accounting and bookkeeping functions and also to speed up hiring, especially in the sales, engineering, and finance teams. Shinde anticipates that they will double or even triple the finance team within the next 12 months.
“As our customers scale through to their Series B, the more you can use our solution in real time to see what is happening with your finances, especially with startups and businesses having more of a remote workforce,” Swapnil Shinde added. “Zeni fits with that.”
Ash Lilani, managing partner at Saama Capital, one of Zeni’s most famous and early investors, acknowledged that he had a sense of how big the market in all of it could be — up to 200 billion — and that these types of financial services can be extremely problematic for startups.
“To know where you stand financially in real time is hard to do; usually, you get that information at month-end,” Lilani stated. “I believe that we have the opportunity to build a massive business. Although Zeni is focused on the startups, smaller and medium-sized market could gain. “As they grow, Zeni will become their Controller at the back of the line since companies can hire a CFO to make the right decisions.”
