GimBooks raises seed funding from First Check Ventures, Y Combinator

Hyderabad GimBooks, a Raipur, Chattisgarh-based fintech startup, a go-to platform for SMEs, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from a syndicate of angel investors pooled in by First Check Ventures through the US-based AngelList platform. The seed funding round was led by Ali Jamal, Founding partner at First Check Ventures. US-based startup accelerator Y Combinator invested $1, 25,000 in the startup.

This is the first funding round raised by GimBooks since its inception in 2018; prior to this, the startup was bootstrapped. GimBooks will utilise the funds to ramp up its team, product development and to accelerate customer acquisition via increased marketing spends.

About the fundraise, Yash Raj Agarwal, Founder & CEO, GimBooks says, "We are delighted to announce the first-ever funding round of GimBooks, which enables us to fast-track our growth and customer acquisition, and strengthens our commitment to provide high-quality solutions for millions of small and medium sized businesses in India. We are grateful to our investors -- First Check Ventures and Y Combinator for the showing their faith in us. Going forward, more and more SMEs of our country will continue to show an increased inclination towards digitization and tech adoption in the years to come, and while leveraging on this trend, we at GimBooks remain committed to continuously serving the SME ecosystem."

GimBooks, which was launched originally an invoice-maker app in 2018, hasevolved over the years into a full-fledged bookkeeping, accounting, lending and banking platform dedicated to empower India's MSME and SME entrepreneurs.GimBooks operates on a freemium model; the startup has already acquired 12, 500 paid users, and is looking to cross a milestone of 25,000 paid users by the end of the current year. The fintech company is currently in talks with a few more international investors to raise its pre-Series A funding round in the upcoming months.

During the last quarter, that is, Qr 1 of FY21, GimBooks has clocked a revenue of Rs 75 lakh, whereas in the ongoing Q2 of FY21, the startup is on track to cross Rs 1 crore revenue. The startup is growing at a rate of 15-20 per cent Month-on-Month (MoM), and has reached nearly 2 million installs of its flagship mobile app.

GimBooks' long term plan is to become the most trusted 'platform of choice' for SMEs in India.