Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) EdTech startup MSMEx raised $1 million in a Pre-Series A funding round co-led by Razorpay, the leading full stack financial solutions company, and the international investment firm TNF Investments.
The company announced that it would use this funding to develop new intuitive technologies, including a deep learning-based recommender system, an intelligent LIVE chat system and an AI-based behaviour analytics system.
The startup had earlier raised angel funding from a clutch of leading angel investors including Badri Pillapakkam (Partner at Omidyar Network), Krishna Kumar (Founder of SimpliLearn), Manoj Sharma (CTO of Cleartrip), and Heetesh Veera (Partner at E&Y), among others. MSMEx was founded by Amit Kumar in 2019 and was joined at an early stage by Vishal Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Khushboo Arora and Kumar Sambhav.
Amit Kumar, Co-founder & CEO, MSMEx said “Only 0.5 per cent of micro businesses are able to scale up and graduate to the next level in India, while the comparative figures for China and the USA are at 25 per cent and 45 per cent respectively. Not every micro business owner gets access to world-class business education or mentors and advisors, as 90 per cent of them are located outside metro cities. MSMEx is taking structured business education and advisory services to every corner of India, to create future leaders of Indian economy.
MSMEx offers LIVE business sessions for micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) owners and also connects them with curated business experts for online interactions and hand holding support. Business owners and entrepreneurs can also ask queries to experts through a LIVE chat community and can talk to experts through 1-on-1 video calls for mentoring and leadership advice.
Speaking about the future growth, Amit added, “Our investors understand the MSME space well, and we are therefore excited to achieve this aligned vision together of impacting 10 million MSMEs in the next five years.”
Currently, the MSMEx platform has over half a million users representing micro and small businesses from over 1,200 cities across India. The startup said it has registered 55 per cent MAU growth since January. MSMEx currently offers English language content with a strong focus on the quality of experts. The platform will shortly be launching content in Hindi and other regional languages to cater to a much larger non-English speaking user base.
While there are various start-ups solving the problems of the small and medium enterprise segment through lending, payments, accounting, attendance, distribution and other solutions, the micro segment continues to be a significantly underserved market. MSMEx believes that with over 63 million micro enterprises in India, this segment is unfolding as a multi-billion opportunity.
