[Funding alert] Refrens raises funds from Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Anupam Mittal, others

Bengaluru-based startup Refrens, which offers free invoicing, payments, and expense management system, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a group of angel investors including Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Founder of Paytm) and Anupam Mittal (Founder of Shaadi.com). 

The investment round also saw participation from The Collective fund, Mumbai-based early-stage fund FirstCheque, Amiya Pathak of Ezcred, Gireesh Subramaniam of Freshworks, Sujayath Ali, and Naveneetha Krishnan - Founders of Voonik.com, Amit Lakhotia of Park+, Ajeet Khurana - CEO of Zebpay, Founders and senior management of Kaleyra, Founders of DailyNinja, Springworks, and few others.  

The startup said it will use the funds for expanding reach of the platform and adding freelancer friendly financial services. 

Naman Sarawagi, Founder, Refrens, said, 

“Freelancers and soloists are the future of work. We are building an important platform to enable them to get payments faster and get more work. It’s really encouraging to have some of the most prominent entrepreneurs in the Indian startup ecosystem to put their trust on us for this endeavour.”

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Launched in July 2019, Refrens is designed for B2B service providers including designers, software developers, accountants, marketers, consultants, etc. The startup’s focus is on individual freelancers and small businesses. The platform currently has 12,000 businesses and freelancers using the system, which is growing at 10 percent every week. 

Refrens was founded by Naman Sarawagi and Mohit Jain. This is their second startup. Naman has been part of early stage teams at startups like Freecharge and ZipDial. Mohit Jain had earlier founded a school ERP startup and was CTO at FindYogi. He has been a tech consultant to multiple startups including DailyNinja and SuperProcure. 

Kushal Bhagia, CEO of FirstCheque, an early stage fund, said,

“Freelancers and B2B service providers is a large and growing segment. There are about 15 million white collar professionals in this industry in India alone. There is a huge opportunity in building for this community of users.”