Google invests in Tiger Global and Sequoia-backed Progcap

Progcap, which facilitates debt capital for underserved micro and small businesses, has raised $40 million in its extended Series C round. Besides existing backers such as Tiger Global, Creation Investments and Sequoia Capital, new investor Google has also participated in the round that kicked off in October last year.

Progcap will use the funding to support its expansion and accelerate product development, said the company in a press release. According to the Delhi-based startup, it has raised over $100 million to date and is currently valued at $600 million.

Founded by Pallavi Shrivastava and Himanshu Chandra, Progcap is a financial technology platform that digitizes supply chains and facilitates access to finance for last mile retailers.

The company empowers retailers by providing them access to flexible, customized capital that matches their business growth requirements along with a host of other technology solutions to help them increase profitability, manage cash flow, and expand their businesses.

Progcap said that it already facilitated over 6,500 crore credit, working with over 700,000 SMBs through its retailer financing platform. It also claims to have recorded annualized disbursals of $1 billion, growing by 4 times year on year on the back of very strong unit economics.

Progcap is yet to file its annual financial statements for FY22, however, its scale grew nearly 7X to Rs 5.92 crore during FY21 from Rs 85 lakh in FY20, as per its annual financial statements filed with RoC. During the period, the company managed to control its losses by 25.4% to Rs 5.42 crore from Rs 7.27 crore in the preceding fiscal year (FY20).

Over the past few years, Google has been focusing on Indian startups and recently invested in ShareChat’s $255 million round and its competition DailyHunt. Previously, it backed neobanking startup Open, InMobi’s Glance, Dunzo, offline to online commerce and payments platform Dot, Freshworks, Drivezy, CarDekho, and Practo, among others.

Earlier this year, Google announced that it will invest up to $1 billion in Bharti Airtel. In 2020, it invested $4.5 billion in Reliance Jio which was a part of $10 billion worth fund announced by Google in the same year.