Mastercard and Arkam Ventures join Signzy’s Series A round

Digital KYC startup Signzy has raised an additional $5.4 million in its Series A funding round led by Arkam Ventures (Unitary Fund) along with the participation of existing backers.

The Bengaluru-based company has made an allotment of 29,247 Series A CCPS at an issue price of Rs 11,663 per share to raise the aforementioned sum, shows regulatory filings.

According to the regulatory filing, the company has raised Rs 34.11 crore and is likely to raise the rest amount soon. Arkam led the round with an investment of Rs 13.5 crore, followed by Stellaris and Kalaari infusing Rs 12.75 crore and Rs 4.45 crore. Mastercard Asia poured in Rs 3.41 crore in the round. 

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, the company has been valued more than Rs 250 crore (post-money). In November 2018, Signzy had raised a $3.6 million in the first tranche of the Series A financing led by Stellaris and Kalaari Capital.

New investors Arkam and Master Card have acquired 5.37% and 1.36% stake in this funding tranche. Early backer Stellaris Venture Partners has increased its shareholding to 16.51% while Kalaari Capital now controls a little over 13.2% stake in the digital KYC startup. 

Kalaari’s seed fund Kstart had poured in an undisclosed sum in Signzy’s seed funding round in 2016. 

Promoters’ collective shareholding will be diluted to 46.35% from 53.62% post allotment of this tranche. The latest fundraising comes at a time when Mastercard has been using Signzy’s video-based KYC solution for its banking customers. 

The five-year-old startup offers a digital onboarding solution for banks, NBFCs and other financial institutions. The platform focuses on making compliance and onboarding processes easy and claims to reduce fraud risk. According to its website, it reduces 90% turnaround time or TAT and 75% operational expenditure with 3X increase in productivity of sales. 

Besides India, Signzy has a presence in the US and the Middle East. Its clientele includes the State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Aditya Birla Sunlife AMC, and BoB Financial et al. The company counts Veri5digital, Hyperverge and Digio as competition.

In August 2019, Veri5Digital had raised $2 million from California-based incubator Khosla Ventures in Series A round.

Update: The headline and story have been updated after announcement of the fresh round by Signzy through a press release.