With Fin-Tech Poised As The Next Big Thing, Payments Startup happay Bags US$500K

E27.CO: On the sidelines of LetsIgnite (an event organised for angel investors in India by online deal-making platform LetsVenture on April 22), leading VC funds like IDG Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners told e27 that fin-tech is the next industry — after consumer Internet — that is poised to see the most number of actions in the coming years. Bangalore-based seed-stage VC fund AngelPrime has sensed this opportunity early on and invested US$500,000 in city-based happay, a startup which makes expense management cashless, paperless and mobile.

happay will use the funding for product development, sales and marketing, and hiring new talent to facilitate faster growth.

Founded in 2012 by Anshul Rai and Varun Rathi, happay is a business expense management solution that streamlines an organisation’s expense workflow from end-to-end (expense reporting to accounting) and gives real-time visibility and control over business spending. All purchases done from this card are auto-captured on the happay platform. Employees can snap photos of receipts, record cash expenses and submit expense reports in minutes, on the go.

The happay solution sports capabilities such as on/off control, channel-specific limits (e.g. ATM, online, POS), organisational hierarchy-based rules and approvals, as well as direct integration into ERP software like Tally, SAP, Quickbooks and others. happay’s cloud and mobile-based expense management solution gives real-time visibility and tighter control over business and employee spends, stated an official release.

The three most common use cases for happay are travel and expenses, office administration, procurement and petty cash, and employee/partner disbursements.

AngelPrime is a Bangalore-based seed fund and incubator started by serial entrepreneurs Bala Parthasarathy, Sanjay Swamy, and Acharya. The fund recently roped in former MakeMyTrip senior executive Amit Somani as a Partner. AngelPrime has invested in around half-a-dozen companies including ZipDial (acquired by Twitter), Ezetap, Smart Owner, Synup and HackerEarth.

In February, AngelPrime invested US$500,000 in Indian IoT startup Nimble Wireless.