GrowthCap leads $1.85 Mn in pre-seed round in Spense

Spense, a Bengaluru-based startup building programmable banking and card infrastructure, has raised $1.85 million in its pre-seed round led by GrowthCap Ventures. 

Kunal Shah (founder, CRED), Sayandeb Banerjee (co-founder, The Math Company), Suresh Rayasam (Head of Applied AI for GTM), Ravi Sudhakar (Director, AI Global Business Strategy, Microsoft), among others have also participated.

According to Spense, the funds will be used to onboard additional banks, grow fintech partnerships, and expand the product and technology stack to support more use cases beyond credit cards.

Founded by Pawan Kumar (former head of Applied Science at Uber India) and Srinivas Krishnamurthy (former Technical Lead at BNP Paribas), Spense provides infrastructure for secured credit cards, prepaid cards, and forex programs. 

The platform is designed to support financial institutions with regulatory oversight and integration capabilities for new credit products.

Spense is currently used by regulated entities to launch and manage secured credit programs. The company’s infrastructure enables faster go-to-market timelines and auditability while integrating with legacy systems.