The First Indian Husband and Wife to Have Their Own Unicorn

A husband and wife team became the country’s first husband and wife to build their respective startups into unicorns with a $1 billion valuation.

Oxyzo Financial Services, a digital lending company co-founded by Ruchi Kalra, announced on Wednesday that it had raised $200 million in its first round of funding, led by Alpha Wave Global, Tiger Global Management, Norwest Venture Partners, and others. Her husband Asish Mohapatra’s OfBusiness, which received backing from SoftBank Group Corp. and others less than a year ago, had reached the same valuation.

Ms Kalra, 38, and Mr Mohapatra, 41, met while working at McKinsey & Co. Ms Kalra and Mr Mohapatra are both Indian Institute of Technology graduates. Both startups are profitable, which is a rare feat for a young startup. Ms. Kalra is the CEO of Oxyzo, whereas Mr. Mohapatra is the CEO of OfBusiness. Oxyzo was also funded by Matrix Partners and Creation Investments in one of the largest Series A rounds in India’s startup industry.Ms Kalra, Mr Mohapatra, and three others founded Oxyzo in 2017 as an offshoot of the couple’s first startup, OfBusiness, which they started with three others in early 2016. In a credit-starved country where small and medium businesses struggle to get working capital, Oxyzo uses technology to crunch data and provide purchase financing to businesses.

Small and medium-sized businesses can get bulk raw materials like steel, diesel, food grains, and industrial chemicals from OfBusiness, formerly known as OFB Tech Pvt. According to Mr Mohapatra, it was valued at over $1 billion when SoftBank and others invested in April of last year. According to him, the startup’s valuation reached nearly $5 billion in December as SoftBank and others invested more money in it.

Ms Kalra, a partner at McKinsey, left the firm to start a business with her husband, who had left venture capital firm Matrix. She explained, “We both had an itch to go out and build something.”

Oxyzo is a supply chain analytics company with over 500 employees and a data warehouse. Since its inception, it has disbursed over $2 billion in loans and has been profitable.

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