Startup Deep Dive : EnKash — revenue fell 77% in FY25 even as losses halved

In the year to March 2025, EnKash’s revenue fell 77%, from ₹304 crore to ₹71 crore. Its net loss, at the same time, nearly halved. Most startups that lose three-quarters of their topline in a single year are dying. EnKash was, by its own numbers, getting healthier.

The explanation sits inside the same filing that carries the bad-looking headline: the company had been booking the full value of corporate gift cards it resold as revenue, and when it pulled back from that low-margin business, the top line collapsed along with the biggest cost line sitting under it. What is left is a smaller, more fee-driven business built around corporate cards, expense management and a payments stack called Olympus, run by three former Citrus Pay colleagues who have spent eight years trying to get Indian small and mid-sized businesses to stop paying vendors by cheque.

Quick facts

What they do

EnKash sells small and mid-sized Indian businesses a way to run their payables, receivables and expenses through one platform instead of a spreadsheet, a bank portal and a stack of physical cheques. Its core customer, by the company’s own description in 2023, is a business with annual turnover between roughly ₹10 crore and ₹1,000 crore — too large to run finance on WhatsApp and Excel, too small to get the treasury tooling that banks reserve for large enterprises. The product set spans virtual and physical corporate cards with programmable limits, an expense-management layer that automates reconciliation and approvals, short-term credit lines and BNPL for working capital, and — since 2023 — a full payables-receivables-reconciliation suite called Olympus, sold under EnKash’s own Reserve Bank of India payment aggregator licence. In May 2025 the company added a payment gateway aimed specifically at small and startup merchants, a segment it says numbers more than 63 million businesses in India.

The origin

Naveen Bindal, Yadvendra Tyagi and Hemant Vishnoi met at Citrus Pay, the Mumbai payments company that PayU acquired in 2016. Bindal had run product and technology at Citrus Pay and worked earlier at Citibank and DBS in Singapore; Tyagi had come up through NPCI, HDFC Bank and Global Blue; Vishnoi had spent time at ICICI Bank running card acceptance and e-commerce before a stint as vice-president at PayU India. Between them, industry accounts put more than fifty years of card and payments experience in the room when they registered Nehat Tech Solutions in 2017.

The insight they carried out of Citrus Pay was narrow and specific: India’s banks issued corporate credit cards almost exclusively to large enterprises, because underwriting a small business with thin credit history was expensive and the ticket sizes did not justify a relationship manager’s time. Prepaid, pre-funded corporate cards — where the business loads its own money rather than borrowing — sidestepped the underwriting problem entirely, and EnKash built its first product around exactly that: prepaid and expense cards for SMEs and startups, sold with the promise of interest-free float and instant issuance rather than a bank’s paperwork.

The struggle years

Two structural problems followed EnKash from its first years, and both are visible in the record with dates attached.

The first was regulatory timing. EnKash built Olympus, its payables-receivables platform, to run under its own payment aggregator status rather than a partner bank’s licence — a call that meant the entire product’s commercial launch depended on the Reserve Bank of India’s approval clock. EnKash received in-principle approval in January 2023 and did not get the final go-ahead to operate Olympus as an online payment aggregator until December 2023, according to Inc42’s coverage of both approvals. For roughly eleven months, the company could run pilots and onboard early customers but could not scale the aggregation business the way a fully licensed player could — a gap that mattered in a market where RBI had spent much of 2020 to 2022 restricting new payment-aggregator approvals across the industry.

The second was a revenue model that looked bigger than it was. By August 2023, EnKash was telling Business Standard it had closed the prior year near $22 million in revenue and was targeting $30 million (about ₹250 crore) for the year ahead, a projected 36% jump, with founder Hemant Vishnoi citing digitisation among small businesses as the driver. The company beat that target on paper — FY24 operating revenue came in at ₹304 crore, per filings reported by Entrackr — but a large share of that growth, and of the ₹345 crore in total costs that came with it, sat in a single pass-through line: gift cards purchased for resale, which alone accounted for ₹233 crore of FY24 costs. A business that books the gross value of a resold gift card as revenue can grow its topline quickly without growing the part of the business anyone would value on a multiple. FY24’s ₹37 crore net loss was the price of running that line at scale.

The turning point

The clearest before-and-after in EnKash’s numbers is the FY24-to-FY25 correction, and it is a turning point the company appears to have chosen rather than suffered. In FY24, gift-card purchases for resale ran to ₹233 crore, roughly two-thirds of total costs, against ₹304 crore of operating revenue. In FY25, EnKash cut that spend by 73%, to ₹62 crore, and its operating revenue fell in step, to ₹71 crore — a 77% drop, per the Registrar of Companies filings Entrackr reviewed. Employee costs fell too, by 44% to ₹23.5 crore, and other expenses dropped 89%. The net effect: total income fell from ₹308 crore to ₹77 crore, but the net loss fell from ₹37 crore to ₹17 crore, a 54% improvement, even as return on capital employed stayed deeply negative at -37.7% and EBITDA margin sat at -32.25%. Unit economics moved the wrong way on paper — EnKash spent ₹1.32 for every rupee of operating revenue in FY25, up from ₹1.13 in FY24 — because stripping out the gift-card pass-through removed a low-margin but high-volume revenue base faster than it removed fixed costs. Whether this was a deliberate pivot toward higher-quality, fee-based revenue or a forced retreat from a business RBI’s payment aggregator conditions made harder to run at the old scale is not something the public filings say; both readings are consistent with the numbers.

The money behind it

EnKash’s disclosed fundraising has been modest by Indian fintech standards, and it has not raised a priced round since 2022.

• Seed: Axilor Ventures backed EnKash at inception; amount undisclosed (Axilor’s continued participation confirmed in later rounds per Inc42 and IBS Intelligence).
• Series A — $3 million, April 2019: led by Mayfield India and Axilor Ventures, reported at the time by Inc42 and YourStory as funding for expansion of EnKash’s card-issuance and expense-management product.
• Series B — $20 million, April 2022: led by Ascent Capital, with Baring Private Equity India and White Venture Capital joining, and Mayfield India and Axilor Ventures returning, per IBS Intelligence and Inc42. Co-founder Hemant Vishnoi said the capital would fund banking-as-a-service features, international expansion and scaling the “plug and play” card-issuance stack.
• Total disclosed funding: at least $23 million across the three rounds above — no further institutional round has been publicly reported since April 2022, a gap of more than four years by September 2026.

The valuation trail is thinner and unconfirmed at every point. In October 2021, Inc42 reported EnKash was in talks to raise $25 million at a valuation approaching $100 million — a round that, based on the public record, never closed at that size; the company instead raised $20 million five months later. In December 2022, Business Standard reported Vishnoi’s claim that valuation had grown three-fold since the March 2022 Series B, without either the company or the outlet naming a figure. Taken together, both reports are directional and neither is an audited number — EnKash has not published a valuation.

How it makes money

EnKash earns from several distinct lines rather than one dominant fee, which is also why a single line item — gift cards — was able to distort revenue as much as it did.

• Card interchange and programme fees: a cut of the interchange or programme fee on spend routed through EnKash-issued corporate and expense cards, issued in partnership with banks including SBM India, ICICI, Axis, Kotak and HDFC and card networks including Mastercard (partnership since December 2020) and Visa.
• Payment aggregation and gateway fees: transaction fees on payments processed through Olympus and, from May 2025, the EnKash Payment Gateway, both run under its own RBI payment aggregator authorisation rather than a partner’s.
• Software and platform fees: subscription or per-seat charges for the expense-management, approval-workflow and reconciliation software layered on top of the payment rails.
• Credit and BNPL spreads: EnKash does not lend on its own book; it partners with banks and NBFCs to underwrite credit lines and BNPL for its business customers, earning a distribution or platform fee rather than carrying the credit risk itself.
• Gift-card resale (largely wound down): EnKash bought corporate gift cards and resold them to business customers, booking the full resale value as revenue against the purchase cost as its largest expense line — a pass-through business that, as the FY24-to-FY25 numbers show, inflated both revenue and costs without a comparable margin.

The part outsiders tend to get wrong, based on the FY25 filings, is treating EnKash’s headline revenue as a proxy for the size of its actual payments and software business. Because gift-card resale sat inside “operating revenue” at gross value, a 77% revenue decline overstated how much of the underlying card, software and aggregation business actually shrank.

The numbers

EnKash does not file as a listed company, so the only audited-adjacent figures available are those pulled from its Registrar of Companies filings by trade press; the FY23 figure below is company-stated to Business Standard rather than a filing figure, and is marked accordingly.

Two things stand out beyond the topline swing. First, gift cards purchased for resale were the single largest cost line in both years for which a breakdown exists — ₹233 crore of FY24’s ₹345 crore in total costs, and ₹62 crore of FY25’s ₹94 crore — confirming that the pass-through gift-card business, not core operations, drove most of the year-on-year swing in both revenue and costs. Second, EnKash held ₹25 crore in cash and bank balances as of March 2025 against current assets of ₹68 crore, a cash position that has not been topped up by a new funding round since April 2022.

Where the money comes from

EnKash has not published a formal revenue-by-segment or geography split in its filings, so the picture has to be built from what the company and trade press have disclosed at different points.

• Customer segment: businesses with annual turnover of roughly ₹10 crore to ₹1,000 crore, as described by co-founder Hemant Vishnoi to Business Standard in August 2023 — deliberately positioned between micro-businesses too small to be profitable and large enterprises already served by banks’ treasury desks.
• Product mix at Series B (April 2022): Inc42 reported EnKash was processing roughly $2 billion in annualised spend across more than 70,000 active businesses and 500,000-plus issued cards at the time of its $20 million raise — the clearest disclosed snapshot of scale on the card-and-spend side of the business.
• Geography: overwhelmingly India-focused; the April 2022 funding was earmarked partly for international expansion, but no subsequent disclosure quantifies revenue from outside India.
• The surprise: the FY24 and FY25 filings show that, at least in accounting terms, a single pass-through category — resold gift cards — briefly outweighed the company’s core card, software and aggregation revenue combined, before being cut back sharply in FY25.

The risks

• Revenue built on a shrinking, low-margin pass-through line. Gift-card resale drove ₹233 crore of FY24’s ₹345 crore in costs and a comparable share of revenue; cutting it caused a 77% revenue decline in FY25. If EnKash cannot replace that volume with fee-based card, software or aggregation revenue, the smaller post-cut business may struggle to show the growth investors expect from a fintech eight years into its life.
• Regulatory dependency on a single licence. Olympus and the EnKash Payment Gateway both run on EnKash’s own RBI payment aggregator authorisation, which took from January 2023 (in-principle) to December 2023 (final) to secure. Any tightening of RBI’s payment aggregator or PPI norms — the regulator restricted PPI-credit-line loading industry-wide in June 2022 — would hit a business that has chosen to hold its own licence rather than ride a bank partner’s.
• Thin cash cushion without a recent capital raise. EnKash reported ₹25 crore in cash and bank balances as of March 2025, still posting a ₹17 crore annual loss and a -37.7% return on capital employed, more than four years after its last disclosed institutional round in April 2022. A widening funding gap in Indian fintech since 2022 has made later-stage rounds harder to close at the founders’ preferred valuation, per the unconfirmed three-fold valuation claim made in December 2022 and never followed by a priced round.

The takeaway

The lesson in EnKash’s FY25 filing is not really about EnKash. It is about reading a revenue line before believing it. A company can show 77% revenue decline and be, by every profitability measure it also discloses, in better shape than the year before — because the number investors and journalists reach for first, topline revenue, says nothing about what kind of revenue it is. EnKash spent several years letting a pass-through gift-card business inflate both sides of its income statement; unwinding it made the headline worse and the business, on its own numbers, healthier. Anyone reading a startup’s growth story off a single revenue figure, without asking what sits inside it, is reading half the filing.

Frequently asked questions

What does EnKash do?

EnKash provides corporate cards, expense and spend management software, and a payables-receivables-reconciliation platform called Olympus for Indian small and mid-sized businesses, along with a payment gateway launched in May 2025 for small and startup merchants.

Who founded EnKash and when?

EnKash was founded in 2017 by Naveen Bindal, Yadvendra Tyagi and Hemant Vishnoi, three former colleagues from Citrus Pay, the payments company PayU acquired in 2016. It operates under the legal entity Nehat Tech Solutions Private Limited.

How much funding has EnKash raised?

At least $23 million across three disclosed rounds: an undisclosed seed from Axilor Ventures, a $3 million Series A in April 2019 led by Mayfield India and Axilor, and a $20 million Series B in April 2022 led by Ascent Capital with Baring Private Equity India and White Venture Capital. No priced round has been publicly disclosed since.

Is EnKash profitable?

No. EnKash reported a net loss of ₹17 crore in FY25 (year to March 2025), an improvement from a ₹37 crore loss in FY24, according to filings reported by Entrackr. Its EBITDA margin in FY25 was -32.25% and return on capital employed was -37.7%.

Why did EnKash’s revenue fall 77% in FY25?

The drop was driven mainly by a sharp pullback in EnKash’s gift-card resale business, where it had been booking the full resale value of purchased gift cards as revenue. Gift-card purchases, its largest cost line, fell from ₹233 crore in FY24 to ₹62 crore in FY25, and operating revenue fell in step, from ₹304 crore to ₹71 crore.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• YourStory, November 2019 — “The brainchild of former Citrus Pay execs, EnKash gives…” (founders, founding background)
• Inc42, October 2021 — “Exclusive: EnKash To Raise $25 Mn, Valuation To Soar 12X-14X” (2021 valuation talks)
• Inc42, April 2019 — “Mayfield And Axilor Invest $3 Mn In Payments Platform EnKash” (Series A)
• IBS Intelligence, April 2022 — “EnKash raises $20m in Series B round led by Ascent Capital” (Series B investors)
• Inc42, April 2022 — “EnKash Raises $20 Mn To Scale Up Its Plug And Play Cards Issuance Stack” (Series B use of funds, 2022 scale metrics: $2 billion annualised spend, 70,000+ businesses, 500,000+ cards)
• Business Standard, December 2022 — “Fintech firm Enkash claims three-fold growth in valuation since March” (valuation claim)
• Inc42, January 2023 — “EnKash Receives In-Principle Approval From RBI For Payment Aggregator Licence”
• FinTech Futures, July 2023 — “Spend management platform EnKash launches Olympus solution for businesses”
• Business Standard / Zee Business, August 2023 — “Enkash expects business to grow by 36% to Rs 250 crore this fiscal” (FY23 revenue, FY24 target, customer segment)
• Inc42, December 2023 — “Fintech Startup EnKash Gets RBI’s Final Approval For Payment Aggregator Licence”
• PR Newswire / Business Standard wire, May 2025 — “EnKash Launches India’s 1st Payment Gateway, Built for SMBs and Startups” (company statement, 63 million SMB merchant estimate)
• Entrackr, 2026 — “Enkash’s revenue nosedives 77% in FY25, halves losses” (FY24 and FY25 financials from Registrar of Companies filings: revenue, costs, losses, ROCE, EBITDA margin, cash balance)
• TheCompanyCheck — “Nehat Tech Solutions Private Limited – FY 2025 Insights” (legal entity name, CIN, FY24 revenue corroboration)

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