KarmaLife, an earnings-linked financial solutions provider for the gig and blue-collared workforce and already the largest Early Wage Access (EWA) platform in India, has raised ₹44 crores in an extension to its Pre-Series funding round led by Krishna Bhupal’s family office and existing investor, Artha Venture Fund, amongst others.
The financing round saw participation from other existing investors, including Net Graph Investments, Singularity Ventures, LogX Venture Partners, Balesh Sharma, Amit Jain, Vikram Kailas, and Shaji Kumar Devakar.
Founded by Rohit Rathi, Naveen Budda, and Badal Malick in March 2020 with a combined 25+ years of business experience, KarmaLife operates in a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) model and has partnered with 50+ organizations, which includes Flipkart, Elastic run, Uber, Porter, Delhivery, and others, to give their employees an option to access their pay-out before payday.
Rohit Rathi, Co-Founder & CEO – KarmaLife, says, “The Company plans to use the fresh capital for scaling, expanding into different geographies, launching more products, and spreading awareness about the product. We welcome this funding round, which reaffirms our investors’ alignment with KarmaLife’s mission. Together, we aim to drive financial inclusion and offer alternatives to predatory lending. Our unwavering goal is to transform the financial lives of millions of blue-collar workers.”
The Company has impacted the lives of 2.70 lakh workers to date. It offers personalized, subscription-based credit products, such as Earned Wage Access and dynamic Line-of-Credit, based on a proprietary real-time credit scoring system called ‘KarmaScore.’ KarmaLife currently serves over 1,00,000+ blue-collar workers through its platform, continually striving to expand its reach and impact.
“We invest in people and entrepreneurs who have the vision, purpose, and team, who have the ability to create great teams and execute. This is the secret sauce to creating any great company. Our portfolio spans geographies (Silicon Valley, Singapore, India, etc.) and mission-critical businesses such as fintech, quant investing, wealth management, and healthcare. KarmaLife is creating a long-term business that is underserved not only in India but in markets globally. We share the business’ growth plans as a portfolio investment, and more importantly, the impact of the business connects a few hundred million Blue collar and gig entrepreneurs into a network-based approach to transparently access credit which is sustainable and affordable,” says Krishna Bhupal, Chairman of his family office.
Earned Wage Access (‘EWA’) gives individuals access to a portion of their earned but unpaid salary any time before their payday. Freeing up employees and employers from the traditional pay cycle, EWA helps disrupt predatory lending models and incentivizes employees to stay longer with an organization. Within six months of partnering with KarmaLife, companies are seeing a 37% increase in retention, enabling them to drive more productivity.