Rohit Taneja, Founder and CEO of Bengaluru-based fintech startup Decentro, says the pandemic has had a massive impact on the entire ecosystem, but fintech startup Decentro is now powering through.
Across the world, business ground to a halt with some customers being put on pause for a while. Meanwhile, many companies realised that they could no longer not go digital.
“It has been a mixed bag where we have seen some customers come up and some customers put on pause for a while,” he says. However, he adds, overall growth has been “tremendous” in the last one year in terms of the number of transactions processed and APIs.
Decentro, which is backed by Y-Combinator, was founded in 2020 and is a full-stack API banking platform. It is a one-stop platform where customers can integrate with desired banking APIs and go live within a few days.
One of the key focus areas for the company this year is the number of customers they are onboarding across different categories. The multiple categories include B2B marketplaces, SME SaaS players, B2C lending players, and others, and the idea is to go deeper into these categories.
Decentro also plans to identify the next set of categories. “We are looking at least a number of 120-130 customers by the time the year ends,” Rohit says, and about 160-170 customers by the end of the financial year. About 50-60 percent of the 120-130 customers are operating on the banking and the payments front; the remaining 40 percent are on the KYC side.
Rohit mentions that a key inquiry by clients has always been regarding streamlining money flow; others are “good add-ons to have” such as KYC and related APIs.
The CEO shares that Decentro had a good fundraise last year, post Y combinator. The company did one angel round before YC and one seed round post YC.
“The idea is to focus on growth as much as possible and then take fundraise as a side add-on to have,” he says.
Decentro aims to raise a Series A round in the upcoming future which will be utilised primarily for growth and expansion of the company.
“The expansion will be category-wise and product-wise. Decentro is looking at closing a Series A round with a good venture capitalist, which has a background and a thesis on this banking and service space.”
