Nimbbl, an Indian startup that offers a one-click payment checkout solution for merchants, has raised $3.5 million in seed and pre-Series A funding from Sequoia Capital India, Global Founders Capital (GFC), financial services platform Groww and a list of angel investors.
The Mumbai-based startup’s solution works with a list of payment methods, including various Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options and the Indian government’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI) infrastructure. Nimbbl personalizes the experience for merchants’ customers by showing them payment methods relevant to them instead of populating every solution on the face of the earth.
Former Citrus Pay and PayU executives Anurag Pandey and Amit Bansal founded Nimbbl in October 2020. The duo chanced upon the idea while working at Indian fintech startup Safexpay after leaving Citrus Pay and PayU, Pandey told TechCrunch.
“We felt that this problem needed to be solved from scratch, and we need to compress thinking on how to go about solving it,” Pandey said.
By personalizing the checkout experience for customers, the payment initiation rate on Nimbbl goes up by about 40%, which translates to a 6%–8% increase in revenue for merchants, he said.
In India, several payment aggregators already offer proprietary checkout experiences that merchants can deploy, but those tend to not solve the payment initiation problem nor do they remove the friction customers face in narrowing down the relevant payment instruments, he said. In some cases, the checkout solutions offered by aggregators also have limited payment options and often don’t include modern ones such as UPI and BNPL, which digital-savvy customers often look for.
Similarly, e-commerce platforms such as Shopify provide their one-click checkout solutions in markets including the U.S., but those offerings are not available to Indian customers.
Nimbbl’s solution can be integrated within a website, mobile app or platforms such as WooCommerce, Magento or Shopify.
Since its launch, Nimbbl has attracted over 4,000 merchants to its checkout solution. It counts Indian airline Go First, audio device maker Skullcandy and cruise liner Cordelia Cruises among its clients.
Nimbbl recorded about $240 million in total payment volume in the financial year 2022-23, and has so far clocked between $970 million and $1.2 billion this year. The startup has a team of 37 people spread across Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru.
Digital transactions in India surged by nearly 54% to $36.78 trillion in FY 2021-22 from $23.87 trillion in 2017-18, per data presented by the government last month. This growth is anticipated to persist given India’s ongoing digital transformation.
Nimbbl’s success in the last one-and-a-half years of its existence also helped it attract Palo Alto-based angel collective Amara VC as well as Indian internet entrepreneurs and executives such as CRED founder Kunal Shah, Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau, and Jupiter founder Jitendra Gupta to participate in the all-equity funding rounds.
Pandey said Nimbbl will deploy the funds to scale its system and invest in sales.