India early wage access start-up secures $82m

The company named several other individual investors in a statement. Refyne was established in 2020 by Chitresh Sharma and Apoorv Kumar, and it claims to be India’s first and largest EWA platform. The company raised USD 4.1m in seed funding from Jigsaw, QED, and XYZ in late 2020 and then a USD 16m Series A from partners at DST and RTP in June 2021.

EWA enables workers to receive a portion of their earned salary on-demand before the scheduled payday. It collaborates with employers – who permit EWA based on the number of days worked in the relevant month – to offer employees properly structured and fairly priced alternatives to payday loans and micro-credit schemes.

“We’ve all watched the growth of India’s fintech industry in the past decade, the influx of digital tools to save, invest and grow our money; it has been an inspiring story. But this has also unravelled several discriminatory and opportunistic schemes, failing to serve the most deserving people, who can turn their life around with a ready source of finance,” Sharma wrote in 2020.

“Today, the payday loans industry does cater to people’s mid-month liquidity need, but in the wrong way. The need was always there. Unfortunately, the industry is built on charging exorbitant rates, putting people into debt cycles due to over-lending. They still don’t have access to affordable finance.”

Refyne’s plug-and-play solution integrates with the existing payroll functions of human resources management systems. The company has partnered with more than 150 organisations – including Practo, TeamLease, Cars24, Shadowfax, Rebel Foods, Acko, BlackBuck, and Cafe Coffee Day – catering to 700,000 employees. It expects to reach 3m employees within 12 months.

Refyne said that its transacting user base has grown 68x and its transaction volume has risen 165x since inception. A fee is collected on each transaction, but employees do not pay interest or processing charges.

Last year, the company teamed up with EY to produce what is claimed to be Asia’s first comprehensive report on EWA. More than 80% of employee respondents said they face a liquidity crunch in between pay cycles, while nearly 60% said the availability of EWA would be a decisive factor in choosing their next job.

The report also found that companies offering EWA experienced a significant decrease in employee attrition, faster talent acquisition, enhanced productivity, and improved net promoter scores.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Financials
• Early-stage
• India
• Financial Services
• Tiger Global Management
• DST Advisors
• RTP Global