Embedded Finance start-up Falcon, which launched in India on Monday, announced its target of hitting $30 million revenue by March 2023. Backed by some marquee investors from the US, India, and West Asia, the start-up aims to tap into the $24-billion market opportunity presented by companies rushing to offer embedded payments and lending products.
Licious founders Abhay Hanjura & Vivek Gupta, Sila Money founder Shamir Karkal, former Affirm CFO Jeremy Solomon, besides executives from Softbank, UAE Sovereign Fund, Silicon Valley Bank, Robinhood and Facebook, are among some early backers of the embedded finance platform. Falcon is co-founded by Prabhtej Bhatia and Priyanka Kanwar, who have “assembled a talented team of leaders from RBL Bank, HDFC, FIS, Mahindra Comviva, Intermiles and Accenture”.
Embedded finance is becoming commonplace with companies looking to overcome challenges of integrating with multiple banks and legacy systems. Falcon brings the speed and flexibility that enable fintechs, start-ups and BFSI companies to launch the most innovative financial products in days, with an almost zero upfront cost.
Co-founder Bhatia said: “We have scaled over $200 million in total payments value without any institutional round, despite inbound interest. We have partnerships in place to get to a scale of $2.5 billion within 12 months. Falcon aims to become the de facto embedded finance platform for the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APMEA) region, targeting $30 billion in total payments value.”
Falcon’s capabilities span globally through partnerships with Visa, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, IndusInd Bank and Punjab National Bank, among others.
Co-founder Kanwar said: “Every company can and wants to become a fintech company today. Businesses want to offer cutting-edge financial solutions, such as Just-in-Time Loans and BNPL or new-age credit cards which gives them access to more granular data, customer stickiness, and expanded revenue streams. While there are some solutions in the market, we believe we are the only ones in India with an agnostic full-stack issuance platform that addresses urgent and unmet needs.”
Licious co-founder Gupta said Falcon was not new to the payments business. “Priyanka and Prabhtej have quietly and diligently been building their technology, integrations, and partnerships to the extent that today they are ready to become a driving force for the major disruption taking place in the Fintech-as-a-service space. I’m thrilled to be a part of the next stage of hyper growth for the company.”
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