happay, the visa card for business expenses suits up to change the way employees report expenses
Founded in 2012, happay is a business expense management solution that streamlines an organization’s expense workflow. It is an end-to-end solution that take cares of expense management to reporting and gives real-time visibility and control over business spending. Anshul Rai and Varun Rathi, both from IIT Kharagpur (batch of 2010) are the brains behind happay and have been trying to crack a piece of the payments puzzle. The team has been at it for a couple of years and has now figured out a way forward with support from RBL Bank in launching the cards and funding from AngelPrime, a seed stage VC fund.
happay aims to make expense management cashless, paperless and mobile by simplifying the entire expense management workflow from recording of expenses to accounting. It allows organizations to replace manual business expense management processes which are costly and cumbersome with VISA cards, that auto-record and classify expenses on mobile as well as automate expense reporting and approval.
All purchases done from this card are auto-captured on the happay platform. Employees can snap photos of receipts, record cash expenses and submit expense reports.
The solution essentially consists of a VISA card that can be remote controlled through a mobile app and a web platform. The monitoring and tracking capabilities gives visibility and tighter control over business and employee spends. The centralized platform allows management to have visibility and control into how and where money is spent. The team has piloted the solution in various industry sectors before the official launch on February 23, 2015. For the cards, happay tied up with RBL Bank (Ratnakar Bank), a fast-growing scheduled commercial bank with a network of over 180 branches and 350 ATMs across 12 Indian states. Ritesh Pai, Senior Vice President and Head Direct Banking Channels, RBL Bank says,
In the recent past, there have been several new payment innovations on the B2C front but very little traction on the B2B payments front. RBL Bank is committed to partnering with innovative digital companies to answer the needs of tomorrow. This partnership is one more step in that direction.
happay has undergone acceleration at TLabs and has been in talks with AngelPrime from a few months. Living with the solution at the AngelPrime office, the deal has now gone through. The seed stage VC fund found a big exit in Zipdial recently and is raising its second fund. It also expanded its management board with Amit Somani coming in and has now strengthened its payments portfolio by adding happay to it. AngelPrime has already invested in Ezetap, a company that builds micro ATMs.
We, at YourStory, have been a beta tester for the solution and the experience has been smooth. Chandan Raj, COO of YourStory says, "Yes, it provides lot more flexibility than normal credit card and better insights on spending pattern so that we can optimize our expenses." The funding round and support of AngelPrime will be used for scaling up and taking the solution to more and more businesses.
Website: happay