Embedded Finance Startup Falcon Emerges from Stealth

NEW DELHI:
Embedded Finance startup Falcon has launched in India, announcing its target of hitting $30M revenue by March 2023. Falcon has already received backing from a number of all-star investors from the USA, India, and the Middle East, indicating interest of the global community in the $24B market opportunity as companies rush to offer embedded payments and lending products.

Shamir Karkal (Founder, Sila Money), Abhay Hanjura & Vivek Gupta (Founders, Licious), Jeremy Solomon (Former CFO Affirm), Boling Jiang (Founder, Lithic), Rangarajan Krishnan (CEO, Five Star Finance), Deepak Shahdadpuri (MD of DSG Consumer Partners), Devesh Sachdeva (MD, Fusion Microfinance), among executives from Softbank, UAE Sovereign Fund, Silicon Valley Bank, Robinhood, & Facebook are early backers of the embedded finance platform.

Embedded finance is increasingly becoming commonplace as companies want to overcome challenges of integrating with multiple banks and legacy systems, which takes an average of 9-12 months, and costs millions of dollars. Falcon brings the speed and flexibility that enable fintechs, startups, & BFSI companies to launch the most innovative financial products in days and not months, with an almost zero upfront cost.

Falcon Co-founder Prabhtej Bhatia said, “We have scaled over $200M in total payments value without any institutional round, despite inbound interest. We have partnerships in place to get to a scale of $2.5B within 12 months. Falcon aims to become the de facto embedded finance platform for the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APMEA) region, targeting $30B in total payments value. The early interest from global investors is a telling sign of the massive disruption that embedded finance will bring in the next 24 months.”

Falcon’s capabilities span worldwide through partnerships with Visa, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), global processors, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, IndusInd Bank, Punjab National Bank, among others.

Falcon Co-founder Priyanka 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. But the go-live journey is not straightforward or bottom line-friendly. 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 these urgent & unmet needs. Having collaborated with the largest commercial banks and businesses to build a solution from the ground up, we are now ready to scale rapidly.”

Vivek Gupta, Founder of unicorn startup Licious and an investor in Falcon says, “Falcon is 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.”

Backed by switch, processor and financial instrument-agnostic technology, Falcon supports financial transactions across credit cards, prepaid cards, cardless payments, UPI, BNPL, FASTag among others. It is the only technology company in the embedded finance space with lending and issuance licenses in India, thus offering flexibility in product innovation. Falcon generates revenue through monetization of every transaction processed, including interchange and platform fees.

Falcon Dart offers instant results with its no code, ready-to-launch software, to help companies launch branded solutions within minutes while Falcon Dive offers APIs & SDKs to allow companies to build their own customized user journeys. Major industries of focus for Falcon include digital lending, wealth management, commercial payments, gaming, cryptocurrency, and financial inclusion.

Prabhtej and Priyanka have a history of successful startups and have assembled a talented team of leaders from RBL Bank, HDFC, FIS, Mahindra Comviva, Intermiles, and Accenture.