India's OfBusiness valued at $5 billion in $325 million funding

OfBusiness, a New Delhi-headquartered startup that sells industrial goods and provides small businesses with credit, has secured its fourth financing round this year and is now valued at about $5 billion.

Alpha Wave Global, Tiger Global and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the startup's $325 million Series G financing round. Alpha Wave Global, formerly known as Falcon Edge Capital, invested in OfBusiness through its new $10 billion+ fund called Alpha Wave Ventures II.

TechCrunch, which first reported about Falcon Edge Capital's new fund and rebranding, reported in October that OfBusiness was in talks with Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global to raise a new round at over $4.6 billion valuation.

This is the fourth financing round for OfBusiness this year. The startup was valued at about $800 million in a round it closed in April this year.

OfBusiness operates as a raw material aggregator and procurement finance provider. The startup works with banks to offer credit lines to small and medium enterprises that have an annual turnover of over $3 million. The six-year-old startup, co-founded by Asish Mohapatra, a former VC, says it operates in nine business-to-business raw material supply chains.

The platform collects data on customers' activity that it relies on to underwrite loans to businesses that are using the OfBusiness platform for sourcing raw material and tenders.

OfBusiness has come a long way in the past six years. Within months of its launch, the startup realized that the bigger problem that its customers were facing was working capital. After this realization, Mohapatra began hiring key leaders to build a finance offering. In a podcast last year with an investor, he said when the realization hit him he had little to no understanding of underwriting and how to build a finance business.

“OfBusiness is well on its way to create a B2B ecosystem that marries large scale with profitability, health and engagement," said Mohapatra in a statement.

"Our march in the last three years across all our three businesses (B2B commerce marketplace, financing and SaaS) has been rapid but there is still long way to go given the depth and unorganized fragmented market structure of B2B in India. We believe that we are in the nascency of the B2B revolution in the country and are privileged to drive it ahead.”

The startup, which has been profitable for the past four years, said its recent expansions has helped it grow its commerce business' revenue by fourfold this year to $1.7 billion with a net profit of $42.5 million, Mohapatra said.

Oxyzo, OfBusiness' financing platform that provides cash flow-matched financing to aid commerce clients, recently expanded to various fee income adjacencies that makes it more relevant to its borrowers, it said. Oxyzo's AUM is expected to grow 100% this year and has doubled its revenue to $360 million with a profit of $21.6 million. It has been profitable since its inception and is works with about 45 financial institutions as debt partners.

Bidassist, the company’s SaaS offering for marketing, has now grown organically to 2.7 million unique users, making it among India’s largest and most engaged scale platforms for SMBs that are looking for revenue opportunities in the public sector domain.

OfBusiness says its three core offerings work in tandem and create "a healthy virtuous cycle at scale." The startup plans to deploy the fresh funds to make deeper inroads into supply chains on the commerce side, while also broadening its technology stack for its SaaS solutions and financing engine.

Also on the roadmap: exploring the public market. OfBusiness plans to initiate its internal IPO process by mid-next year, the startup said.