Zeta eyes $25 million investment by FY18

Digital payments platform Zeta today said it is expecting see an investment of USD 25 million by the financial year 2018 to further increase its product portfolio.

"USD 19 million capital has been committed into Zeta in two rounds. We have planned a serious push as far as marketing is concerned," Zeta CEO and co-founder Bhavin Turakhia said, adding that the company will see investment of USD 25 million in the current and next fiscal, which will be used to scale up business.

The digital payments startup also announced the launch of its three new digital solutions, Fuel & Travel, Communications and Books and Periodicals, as part of its employee tax benefits product portfolio, in addition to its existing products like meal vouchers, medical reimbursements, gadget card and gift card.

The company officials said these "unique" e-solutions offer tax savings to employees as per legal provisions on fuel reimbursements or allowances, mobile phone and Internet bill reimbursements and books and periodicals reimbursements.

"Corporates can easily roll out Zeta's employee-friendly solutions through which a salaried person can increase their take-home salary by Rs 80,000 per annum," Zeta CTO and co- founder Ramki Gaddipati said.

Zeta's cloud-based solution enables companies send grants to employees instantly via a digital dashboard.

In few clicks, managers can credit grants to all employees in one go, who in turn, can spend it using a MasterCard-powered physical Super Card, an NFC-enabled sticker - Super Tag or the Zeta app.

Zeta also has a wide acceptance network that makes it possible for users to utilise their grants at any store including e-commerce sites, company officials said.

The product is, as of now, free to corporates and their employees. Turakhia said on the merchant side "they pay us a commission of about 1 to 1.2 percent on a per transaction basis." "In the last six months, we have signed up 300 corporates that cumulatively have about 450,000 employees between them.

If you look at merchant sign up in the first three months, we have signed up more merchants than our competitors have signed up in 11 years," Turakhia told reporters here.

"That's the scale at which we are growing. We will take extremely aggressive push on sales and marketing, significantly increasing our headcount as well as our initiatives. So, majority of that USD 25 million will go towards these plans," he added.

Zeta, now serves 35,000 users across India, aims to reach one million users by April next year.

At present, the startup has 300 employees.

Co founded by Bhavin Turakhia and Ramki Gaddipati, Zeta is part of Directi Group, a technology conglomerate founded by Turakhia, which now has a group valuation of USD 1.4 billion.

Directi, with 12 portfolio companies, has offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, Ras Al Khaimah and Zurich.