Pravega Ventures leads $2 mn bridge round in fintech startup Mintoak

Mumbai-based Mintoak Innovations, which owns an eponymous digital payments platform, has raised $2 million in a bridge funding round, dubbed a ‘pre-Series A’ round, led by Pravega Ventures and undisclosed returning investors.

The company did not disclose the identities of the other participants in the round.

The capital will be used for product development and technology improvement, the company said in a statement. 

The latest infusion follows a $330,000 round raised from angel investors, mainly senior industry professionals from payments solutions providers Visa and Mastercard, and some banks, it said.

Founded in 2017 by former Visa executives Raman Khanduja, Rama Tadepalli and Sanjay Nazareth, Mintoak offers online payment services for merchants, which enable and record all transactions via Bharat QR, Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), united payments interface (UPI) and Android-based point-of-sales (POS) devices, along with cash transactions. 

The company has tied up with a number of undisclosed banks to leverage their brand and distribution channel to increase its customer reach, while the latter receive the technology footprint in the small and medium enterprises (SME) payments space, it said. 

It is currently in talks to onboard banks in the south and Southeast Asia regions, it added. 

“Our objective is not just to make digital payments acceptance easier but also to facilitate the ecosystem around the merchant’s business to really get the merchant to adopt and use the full power of the digital ecosystem. They are now realising that digital payments are not just one-time transactions, but rather opportunities to drive customer loyalty and optimise operations,” CEO Khanduja said. 

“Amid the excitement related to the payments space in India and a plethora of startups in the ecosystem, what stood out at Mintoak for us was the value-added services product roadmap to empower small merchants with enterprise grade tools,” lead investor Pravega Ventures said in the statement.

Pravega Ventures is a seed-to-Series A focused venture capital firm founded by former SAIF Partners executives Mukul Singhal and Rohit Jain. The firm has invested in companies such as edtech startup GreyAtom, expense management platform Fyle, realty investment platform Property Share and digital lending platform Shubh Loans.

Investors have pumped capital into fintechs throughout April despite the overall slowdown, and the momentum is expected to continue. 

On Monday, digital insurer MetaMorphoSys Technologies raised an undisclosed sum in a bridge funding round, dubbed a Pre-Series-A round, led by Good Capital and Trifecta Capital co-founder Rahul Khanna.

Last week, online small loans platform NIRA raised $2.1 million from undisclosed new and returning angel investors based out of Europe and India.