Tiger Global leads $82 Mn Series B round in Refyne

Salary-on-demand startup Refyne has raised $82 million in its Series B round led by Tiger Global and contributions from new and existing investors such as Digital Horizon, QED Investors, partners of DST Global, Jigsaw VC, XYZ Capital, and RTP Global.

According to the company, it has raised around $106 million till date including a $4 million seed round in December 2020 and a $16 million Series A round in June 2021.

The new funds will be used towards product development, expansion of the team, and ramping up various business functions, said Refyne in a press release.

Founded by Chitresh Sharma and Apoorv Kumar, Refyne partners with employers to enable their staff to access a portion of their accrued but unpaid salary any time before payday. It essentially enables employees to track and withdraw their real-time earned pay instantly, without disrupting payroll.

The company has also developed a proprietary vendor management system and attendance management system that allows large enterprises to scale EWA (Earned Wage Access) for their on-roll and off-roll employees.

The company claims to have partnered with more than 150 organizations, catering to over 700,000 employees. It expects to reach more than 3 million employees in 12 months. The startup’s roster of clients includes Practo, TeamLease, Cars24, Tenon, Shadowfax, Rebel Foods, Acko, BlackBuck, Cafe Coffee Day, among several others.

Refyne also said that its transacting user base has grown 68X and the platform recorded 165X increase in the number of transactions within 10 months of being operational. 

Besides institutional investors, Refyne’s angel investors and advisors include Susir Kumar, founder of Intelenet, Bobby Mehta, chairman of Jones Lang Lasalle’s Board and private global venture capital investor and entrepreneur Oliver Jung.

Refyne doesn’t have any direct competition but its offerings overlap with payday lenders, loan apps, salary advances or early salary providers such as EarlySalary.

According to Fintrackr’s data, Tiger Global has made investments in around three dozen Indian startups in 2021. The New York-based investor has also helped close to 20 startups to attain unicorn status in the last year.