Fintech start-up Minko gets $1.5 mn in funding to expand business

Company announces a B2B payments stack for offline distributors and retailers.

Minko, a financial technology start-up that provides credit to retail shops, has raised $1.5 million in a seed-funding round led by LC Nueva. Shanti Mohan, founder and chief executive officer of LetsVenture, Kunal Shah, founder of CRED, were other investors in the round.

Minko plans to use the fund to hire talent for its technology and sales teams and expand business across India.

The company announced that it offers distributors a B2B payments stack integrated with its flagship product, Minko Credit, thereby offering a technology platform to offline businesses.

Founded by Sanket Shendure and Sanmati Shendure, Minko started product development in January 2021. The founders hail from a family of entrepreneurs and have over 15 years of experience in FMCG product distribution.

Besides its flagship product Minko Credit, the company added three new products in six months - Minko Invoices, Minko QR Code, and Minko Gold. With the development of a digital B2B invoice payment stack embedded with credit, the company aims to move a large portion of ‘retailer-to-distributor’ payments online, the majority of which still happens via cash and cheque.

“We expect demand for our short-term credit product, Minko Credit, to increase manifold as we continue to bridge the largely unmet credit gap of $250 billion for this segment,” said Sanket Shendure, co-founder of Minko.

In six months, Minko has earned business from more than 10,000 retailers and distributors of brands like Unilever, Parle Agro, Coca-Cola and Haldirams. From its current presence in Goa, Maharashtra and Bihar, the company aims to expand to other states in 2022 and get over 100,000 retailers and distributors.