Karbon Card says on track to achieve $300 million in GTV by 2021-end

In December, the company expects to have a ten times growth in its GTV at $25 million compared to the same period last year when the pandemic was at its peak.

With the economy recovering and people returning to offices, Karbon expects corporates and startups to increase their corporate spending. The company has sold more cards during the festive period (October to November) as corporate travel and gifting took center stage.

“With our current growth rate (in terms of gross transaction value), we could become one of the Top 10 corporate card players (including banks) by Q1 of next year,” said Kartik Jain, cofounder of Karbon Card.

Founded in early 2019, Karbon has onboarded 1,500 corporates and startups so far and would be doubling the number of clients by Q3 2022.

The Y Combinator-backed fintech provides corporate credit cards to small businesses and startups. Its card replaces personal credit cards for use by employees of corporations — companies give these cards to their employees for a variety of services, including meeting expenses related to travel, out-of-pocket costs, in the form of financial rewards, salaries, and other corporate use-cases. From the corporate perspective, these cards allow them to track expenses on a real-time basis.

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Jain said that Karbon is also looking to increase the number of lending partners to the company’s balance sheet (lending size) and thus achieve higher transaction levels.

“As a corporate card company offering cards to corporates, we want to be known as a ‘Bank for Corporates’, and also to gain the status of a neobank, going forward. We want to expand our partnership with other lenders to cater to the planned products and increased usage on the cards,” Jain added.

Karbon disseminates collateral-free credit lines of up to Rs 10 crore, depending on the company’s size. It also helps offer expense management through WhatsApp and its primary focus customers are unicorns and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The company, which currently has operations only in India, said it services companies right from bootstrapped startups to unicorns. “Last year witnessed 45 startups join the Unicorn club, of which 20 are our clients.”

Since its inception, Karbon has raised close to $17 million from marquee investors, including Y Combinator, Ramp, Rainfall Ventures, Orios VP, and 2 AM.

Karbon provides Visa-issued cards that allows employees an access to virtual and physical corporate cards and gives the finance team a very tight control over an employee’s spending limits.