US-based fintech startup Growfin has unveiled its Software as a Service (SaaS) platform to the world.
The company is targeting the UK as part of its global launch and wants to draw in clients from the B2B payments market with its finance CRM offering.
Though established in late 2020, Growfin’s origin story actually begins in 2012 with an entirely different startup by the name of Frilp.
Growfin’s two co-founders, CEO Aravind Gopalan and Raja Jayaraman, helped found Frilp together with Shyam Anandaraman, Senthil Kanthasawamy and Anish Deenadayalan. Frilp was a social media platform dedicated to, according to the company’s Twitter, “[helping] you find awesome stuff through word of mouth recommendations from your friends & trusted circles”. In 2015, Frilp was bought by B2B SaaS developer Freshworks, where Gopalan and Jayaraman worked until resigning in 2020.
Growfin spent 2021 developing both product and prospective clients. Through this, it acquired a few early customers including Intercom, Whatfix, MindTickle, Darwinbox, Airmeet, Locus.sh and MonetizeMore.
Like any tech startup, Growfin offers solutions. The primary problem Growfin talks about solving involves the collection of payment information.
The fintech firm notes: “Collecting payments in B2B companies involve not only finance but also other stakeholders like sales and customer success, all of whom end up capturing payment information in their own formats and systems. This creates vacuums of information and countless workflow layers leading to a lot of inefficiencies in collecting payments.”
To combat this, Growfin has developed a platform that, in Gopalan’s words, “invites everyone concerned with an invoice payment, including the customer, to collaborate in one place where they all see the same information and help solve payment issues faster”.
This process is meant to increase efficiency and better build the business-buyer relationship so that B2B payments are collected faster. Like many SaaS platforms, Growfin claims to be powered by AI.
The company has at least one believer in the form of Anurag Ramdasan, Partner at Indian investment firm 3one4 Capital, who is one of the angel investors backing Growfin.
Ramdasan expressed his belief in Growfin’s abilities, saying: “Growfin’s AI-powered system aims to bring archaic accounts receivables systems to the 21st century by providing access to real-time cash flow visibility and predictability for the CFO office.”
The location of Growfin’s actual headquarters is a bit of a mystery. Crunchbase and Growfin’s own press release claim the company is based out of Georgia (specifically the Marietta area, a suburb of Atlanta).
At the time of this writing, however, the company’s LinkedIn page states its primary headquarters is located in popular US tax haven Delaware. When looking over at the LinkedIn page’s section, every listed employee is located in India, including the company’s co-founders Gopalan and Jayaraman. Their previous startup, Frilp, was also based out of India.
