Group payments platform goDutch has raised $1.7 million in seed funding. Matrix Partners India led the round with participation from Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital, VentureSouq and angel investors such as Justin Mateen (Co-founder, Tinder), Kevin Lin (Co-founder, Twitch), Rohan Angrish (Head, ICICI Labs) and Sumon Sadhu.
Founded by IIT Bombay graduates Aniruddh Singh, Riyaz Khan and Sagar Sheth, the goDutch app allows users to record, split and settle group transactions. The funding will be used for building the product and growing their user base.
“All 3 of us were living in the same wing in the same hostel at the IIT Bombay campus and that’s how we know each other. We used to go out on trips quite often and we would order food to our hostel rooms quite often. But people would always be hesitant to pay on behalf of the entire group because then the person who paid had to go around knocking on hostel room doors requesting his friends to pay him back. That was quite irritating and inconvenient,” says Sagar Sheth, co-founder, goDutch, on how the idea for the startup came about. “As we graduated and started living with flatmates, we realized that most of our expenses were group expenses (home rent, furniture rental, food & grocery, OTT platforms, movies & concerts, etc.). Again, managing that wasn’t easy as we had to manually note down every expense and then wait for a lot of days before people eventually cleared the outstanding balance after multiple awkward reminders.”
goDutch is targeting 50 million Indians across the Tier 1 & 2 cities that make up $75B worth of group transactions annually.
Group payments currently is a multi-step process for most users with a high social barrier, and goDutch aims to streamline and solve for this very gap. The goDutch card, issued in partnership with CSB Bank, enables real-time splitting of group payments at any online or offline merchant. While users can get the free virtual card instantly by signing up on the app, the physical cards can be ordered through the app in the coming few weeks.
Rajat Agarwal, Director at Matrix India shared, “While many existing apps allow recording of group transactions, none of those enables seamless peer-to-peer settlements or real-time splitting. We are excited to partner with the goDutch team as they reimagine group payments for a 21st century experience.”
Image source: goDutch
