[Funding alert] Supply-chain fintech startup NAKAD raises $7M in seed round from Accel, Matrix Partners India

Supply-chain focused fintech startup NAKAD on Wednesday said it raised $7 million in a seed round led by Accel and Matrix Partners India, along with participation from AdvantEdge Founders. 

Angel investors, including Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar (Co-founders, Razorpay), Amrit Acharya and Rahul Sharma (Co-founders, Zetwerk), Sachin Agrawal, Aniket Deb, and Ankit Tomar (Co-founders, Bizongo), Nitin Gupta (Uni Cards), and Sharad Verma and Pranay Mehrotra (Managing Directors and Senior Partners, BCG), among others, also participated in the round.

The Delhi-based startup, which offers working capital to India's micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in the supply chain industry, said it will use the funds to build its team, product, and scale its operation in India. 

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Founded in January 2022 by Ujwal Kalra, Sambhav Jain, and Avinash Uttav, NAKAD, with its proprietary MicroBill technology infrastructure, offers invoice discounting services to MSMEs, which were previously unavailable to them from formal channels.

“Hailing from a family of a Chartered Accountant and Industrialist, I implicitly understood the massive credit crunch of MSMEs, resulting in the inability to grow their business and pay their employees on time,” said Ujwal Kalra, CEO, NAKAD.

The startup has partnered with multiple anchors, their supplier base, banks, and NBFCs to enable a seamless solution designed to benefit the entire ecosystem.

Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, said, "Credit for MSMEs is a misnomer. B2B (business-to-business) supply chain credit today is limited to only large enterprises. This is because financial institutions find it extremely hard to access verified information of transactions between OEMs, Tier I, II and III suppliers. We are quite excited to partner with the NAKAD team who have built an amazing technology solution to this problem.”

Highlighting the digitisation scene of India's supply chain sector, Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix India, said, “NAKAD is addressing a big opportunity in deep-tier supply chain financing. The founders have a unique approach to penetrating large industrial ecosystems with software and then driving formal payments and credit penetration among MSMEs in that ecosystem.”