oxyzo Financial Services, a digital lending startup founded by Ruchi . has done kalrassaid on Wednesday it hit the milestone – the 13th Indian startup to do so this year – with its first fund-raising round of $200 million led by alpha wave global, Tiger Global Management, Norwest Venture Partners and others. In less than a year, her husband Ashish Mohapatra of Business reached the same valuation after backing softbank and others.
Kalra, 38, and Mohapatra, 41, are IIT students and met while working at McKinsey. Both startups are profitable, which is an unusual feat for young growth companies. Kalra is the CEO of Oxijo while Mohapatra is the CEO of OffBusiness. Matrix Partners and Creation Investments have also invested in Oxizo, one of the largest Series-A rounds in India’s startup industry.
Oxijo, a combination of the words Oxygen and Ozone, was founded by Kalra, Mohapatra and three others in 2017 as a branch of the couple’s first startup of business, which they started in 2016 along with three others. To provide purchase financing to firms by giving cash flow based credit.
OffBusiness, formally known as OFB Tech, supplies bulk raw materials such as steel, diesel, food grains and industrial chemicals to small and medium sized businesses. According to Mohapatra, when SoftBank and others made the investment in April last year, its valuation exceeded $1 billion. In December, the startup’s valuation reached nearly $5 billion as SoftBank and others poured more money into it, he said via phone.
Kalra, who was a partner at McKinsey, left the firm to join entrepreneurship forces with her husband, who grew out of venture-capital company Matrix. “We were both itching to go out and make something,” she said. Kalra said the two startups run separately with different offices and teams. However, they target the same industries as manufacturing and infrastructure subcontracting. both are based in Gurugram,