Indian couple and founders of Oxyzo Financial Services, became the country’s first wife and husband to have their own enterprises worth at least $1 billion valuation. This makes them the first Indian couple to have a ‘unicorn‘, a term used in referring to startups valued over $1 billion.
Ruchi Kalra, 38, and Asish Mohapatra, 41, are both IIT alumni who met each other while working at McKinsey & Co. While Kalra is the co-founder of Oxyzo, Mohapatra is the co-founder of OfBusiness.
Oxyzo Financial Services, a digital lending company co-founded by Ruchi Kalra, announced on Wednesday that it has raised $200 million in its first round of funding, backed by Alpha Wave Global, Tiger Global Management, Norwest Venture Partners, and others.
Her husband Asish Mohapatra’s OfBusiness, which received investment from SoftBank Group Corp. and others less than a year ago, had attained the same valuation. Kalra, Mohapatra, and three others founded Oxyzo in 2017 as an outgrowth of the couple’s initial firm, OfBusiness, which they started with three others in early 2016.
In a credit-starved economy where small and medium businesses struggle to access working capital, Oxyzo employs technology to analyze data and provide purchase financing to firms. On the other hand, small and medium-sized firms can get bulk raw materials like steel, diesel, food grains, and industrial chemicals from OfBusiness.
According to Mohapatra, it was valued at over $1 billion when SoftBank and others invested in April last year. SoftBank raised the startup’s worth to roughly $5 billion in December.
Published By: Apoorva Wakodikar
Edited by: Subbuthai Padma
