Karbon Card started with a simple pitch to Indian founders: a corporate credit card in about five minutes, with no fixed deposit and no personal guarantee, at a time when banks routinely asked startups for a deposit worth 110% of the limit before they would issue anything. In FY25 the company behind it, Interropac Private Limited, reported operating revenue of ₹55.9 crore ($5.8 million), up 142.0% year-on-year, as per Inc42’s reading of its filings. The contradiction sits inside that growth number: the card company had to stop leaning on the card.
In June 2022 the Reserve Bank of India barred non-bank prepaid instruments from being loaded with credit lines, and the regulatory plumbing that let fintechs dress up a loan as a swipeable card stopped working overnight. Karbon, like Slice, Uni and a clutch of “challenger card” startups, had to rebuild. What emerged is less a credit-card company and more a spend-management and cross-border payments business for startups and small firms, one that grew fast again in FY25 but is still loss-making. This is how it got there, with the numbers on each side.
Quick facts
| Company | Karbon Card (brand); legal entity Interropac Private Limited, CIN U74999KA2018PTC133447 (ROC Bangalore), incorporated 5 October 2018 |
| Founded | 2019 (brand launch); operates as “Karbon Business” today |
| Founder(s) | Pei-fu Hsieh (co-founder and CEO), Amit Jangir, Kartik Jain, Sunil Kumar and Bo Li |
| Businesses | Corporate cards, spend and expense management, vendor and salary payouts, forex outward remittance |
| Latest FY revenue | ₹55.9 crore (FY25), up 142.0% YoY (Inc42, reported from filings) |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Net loss of ₹2.7 crore (FY25); total expenses ₹58.6 crore (Inc42) |
| Listed | Private (not listed) |
| Last valuation / funding | ~$38.3 million raised across 7 rounds; last disclosed round May 2022. Valuation not publicly confirmed |
| Key backers / CEO | Y Combinator, Olive Tree Capital, Avenir Growth Capital, Orios Venture Partners, Ramp, Mercury; CEO Pei-fu Hsieh |
What they do
Karbon sells financial tools to Indian startups and small and midsize businesses that banks find hard to underwrite. The product suite centres on a corporate card and a software layer for controlling company spending, extended over time into vendor payouts and cross-border money movement. The customer is a founder or finance lead who wants to issue cards to a team, track expenses, pay suppliers and send money abroad without stitching together a bank, a spreadsheet and three separate portals. The company now markets itself as “Karbon Business” rather than only a card.
The origin
The founding insight came from the founders’ own frustration. An early-stage startup that walked into a bank for a corporate card was typically asked for a fixed deposit worth around 110% of the credit limit, a personal guarantee from the founders, and a stack of documentation that took weeks to clear. For a company burning cash to grow, locking up more than the card’s limit in a deposit defeated the point. The founders reasoned that if they could offer a corporate card with no fixed deposit, no personal guarantee and an onboarding process measured in minutes, they would remove a real, recurring pain for thousands of young companies.
The team was unusual in its make-up. Karbon paired India-based operators with an international bench: Pei-fu Hsieh, the co-founder and CEO, had spent more than a decade in private equity and venture capital, including stints associated with Kleiner Perkins and 01VC, time at McKinsey, and company-building work with Rocket Internet before turning to Karbon. That cross-border DNA, Bengaluru plus overseas capital and talent, shows up later in the investor list and in the eventual pivot toward forex.
The struggle years
Karbon’s model depended on a specific regulatory arrangement. Because a young fintech could not itself extend credit at scale, the “card” was usually a prepaid payment instrument (PPI) loaded from a credit line supplied by a bank or non-banking financial company (NBFC) partner. It looked and swiped like a credit card, but the underlying mechanics were a loan feeding a prepaid wallet. That structure powered an entire generation of Indian “challenger cards.”
Two shocks hit in close succession:
- The PPI credit-line ban (June 2022): on 20 June 2022 the RBI told non-bank PPI issuers that loading prepaid instruments from credit lines was not permitted. Overnight, the core mechanism behind credit-line-loaded cards was off the table for the whole cohort, Karbon included.
- A funding market that turned: Karbon’s last disclosed external raise was in May 2022, just before the broader Indian startup funding winter set in. With the card model disrupted and fresh equity scarce, the company had to fund a rebuild largely from within.
The strain is visible in the accounts. Interropac’s revenue rose from about ₹19.3 crore in FY22 to ₹33.1 crore in FY23, but the company posted a net loss of ₹10.6 crore in FY23, and reported revenue then fell to ₹23.1 crore in FY24 (as per Inc42’s reading of filings) as the business reset its product mix. A card company watching its headline revenue shrink in the year after its defining product was disrupted is not a comfortable place to be.
The turning point
The single event that reshaped Karbon was the RBI’s 20 June 2022 circular on loading PPIs through credit lines. Before it, the growth story was “credit card in five minutes.” After it, that framing no longer held, and Karbon had to answer a harder question: what is the business if the credit-line-loaded card is gone?
The answer was to lean into the parts that did not depend on that structure, and to add a new one. Karbon deepened its spend-management software, expanded vendor and salary payouts, and, crucially, built a forex and outward-remittance product for businesses making international payments, working with bank partners for the regulated rails. The numbers on either side of the reset tell the story: reported revenue of ₹33.1 crore in FY23, a dip to ₹23.1 crore in FY24 as the model changed, then a rebound to ₹55.9 crore in FY25, up 142.0% year-on-year, with the net loss narrowing sharply to ₹2.7 crore from ₹10.6 crore two years earlier. The company that had to stop leaning on the card grew faster without it.
The money behind it
Karbon has raised roughly $38.3 million across seven rounds, per Inc42 and Tracxn, with the last disclosed round dated May 2022. The funding shape moved from angels to institutional venture capital to debt:
- Seed / angel (through early 2021): about $2 million from angels including Amrish Rau (PayU, Pine Labs) and Kunal Shah (CRED founder), with Orios Venture Partners and US-based 2AM VC also backing early; roughly $3.5 million raised by early 2021.
- Y Combinator (2021): Karbon joined the accelerator and picked up growth capital, giving it a US network that later showed up in its cap table.
- Pre-Series A (September 2021): $12 million.
- Series A (February 2022): $15 million led by Olive Tree Capital, with Harmony and Avenir Growth Capital, and participation from existing backers Ramp, Mercury and Orios Venture Partners. Total equity raised reached about $32 million at this point.
- Debt (17 May 2022): ₹55 crore in debt financing from Northern Arc Capital, UC Inclusive Credit (UCIC) and Oxyzo Financial Services, earmarked to fund credit to startups and SMBs.
Two things stand out. First, US fintechs Ramp and Mercury sitting on an Indian cap table is unusual and reflects the founding team’s cross-border reach. Second, the debt line matters as much as the equity: a card and credit business needs balance-sheet capital to lend, and the ₹55 crore facility was raised precisely to “empower and enable” startups and SMBs with usable credit. No post-2022 round has been publicly disclosed, and Karbon’s current valuation is not publicly confirmed.
How it makes money
Karbon’s revenue is a blend of transaction economics and software, spread across product lines rather than a single fee:
- Corporate and prepaid cards (Visa): virtual and physical cards for teams, earning from interchange and card-related fees on business spending.
- Spend and expense management: software for petty-cash control, expense automation and travel-expense tracking, the “control layer” that keeps finance teams inside Karbon.
- Vendor and salary payouts (Karbon PayOut): paid-out flows to suppliers and staff, monetised on payment volume.
- Forex and outward remittance: business cross-border payments on live FX rates with a stated fee of up to 1%, run over regulated bank rails; this is the newest and increasingly central line after the 2022 pivot.
The part people get wrong is assuming Karbon is primarily a lender earning interest on a credit book. Since the PPI ban, a growing share of the economics comes from payments and forex spreads plus software, where margins depend on volume and fee take rather than on carrying credit risk. That shift is what let revenue rebound in FY25 while the loss narrowed: the company is monetising flow, not just float.
The numbers
Reported financials for Interropac Private Limited, in ₹ crore, as per Inc42’s reading of filings. Note the FY23-to-FY24 dip: it coincides with the post-ban reset of the product mix, and definitions of “revenue” can shift across a restructuring, so treat the FY22 and FY23 figures as reported rather than strictly like-for-like with FY25.
| Fiscal year | Revenue (₹ crore) | Net profit/(loss) (₹ crore) |
| FY22 | 19.3 | Not disclosed here |
| FY23 | 33.1 | (10.6) |
| FY24 | 23.1 | Not disclosed here |
| FY25 | 55.9 | (2.7) |
Supporting FY25 metrics reported by Inc42: total expenses ₹58.6 crore and total assets ₹105.4 crore. Headcount was around 134 as of 2026. The direction is encouraging, revenue up 142.0% and the loss down to a small fraction of the FY23 figure, but Karbon has not yet reported a full-year profit on this data.
Where the money comes from
Karbon does not publish an audited segment split, so a precise breakdown is not verifiable. What the public record does show about the shape of the business:
- Customer base: the company said it served over 2,000 startups and SMBs at the time of its May 2022 debt round; it targets the underbanked startup and SME segment specifically.
- Geography: India-focused for customers, with a cross-border tilt through forex outward remittance for businesses paying overseas suppliers and vendors.
- Product shift: the surprise is that a company launched as a “corporate credit card” now leans heavily on payments and forex, not lending, for growth, the direct consequence of the 2022 regulatory change.
The honest caveat: without a disclosed segment table, the relative size of cards versus payments versus forex is not something to state as fact, only to infer from the company’s own positioning as “Karbon Business.”
The risks
- Regulatory dependence: Karbon’s history shows how a single RBI circular can remove a core product. It relies on bank and NBFC partners for card issuance and for regulated forex rails, so future changes to PPI, co-branding, or cross-border (FEMA/LRS and authorised-dealer) rules could again force a redesign.
- Crowded, well-funded competition: business spend management in India is contested by Volopay, EnKash, Kodo, RazorpayX and Happay (acquired by CRED), among others. Winning on fee take in a commoditising space is hard, and pricing power is limited.
- Still loss-making and customer-cyclical: FY25 revenue grew fast but the company posted a ₹2.7 crore net loss, and its core customers, startups and SMBs, are exactly the segment that cuts spending and card usage in a funding winter, making revenue volatile (as the FY24 dip showed).
The takeaway
The transferable lesson from Karbon is about where your business really sits in the value chain. Its original edge was distribution and user experience, a card founders could get in minutes, but the economics rode on a regulatory structure it did not control. When the RBI removed that structure in June 2022, the companies that survived were the ones that owned a genuine customer relationship they could re-monetise. Karbon still had the finance teams, the spending data and the trust, so it could pivot the same customers into payments and forex. If your advantage lives in someone else’s rulebook, build a relationship deep enough to outlast the rule.
Frequently asked questions
What is Karbon Card and who runs it?
Karbon Card, now branded Karbon Business, is a Bengaluru fintech offering corporate cards, spend management, vendor payouts and forex to startups and SMEs. Its legal entity is Interropac Private Limited, and Pei-fu Hsieh is co-founder and CEO.
How much revenue does Karbon make?
Interropac reported operating revenue of ₹55.9 crore in FY25, up 142.0% year-on-year, with a net loss of ₹2.7 crore, as per Inc42’s reading of its filings. Reported revenue was about ₹19.3 crore in FY22, ₹33.1 crore in FY23 and ₹23.1 crore in FY24.
How much funding has Karbon raised?
Roughly $38.3 million across seven rounds, including a $15 million Series A in February 2022 led by Olive Tree Capital and a ₹55 crore debt round in May 2022. No later round has been publicly disclosed, and its valuation is not publicly confirmed.
Why did Karbon change its business model?
On 20 June 2022 the RBI barred non-bank prepaid instruments from being loaded with credit lines, which disrupted the credit-line-loaded card model Karbon and peers used. Karbon expanded into spend management, payouts and forex outward remittance in response.
Is Karbon Card profitable?
Not on the latest available data. It narrowed its net loss to ₹2.7 crore in FY25 from ₹10.6 crore in FY23 while more than doubling revenue, but has not reported a full-year profit.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Inc42, Karbon Card company and financials profile (2026) — revenue FY24/FY25, net loss, expenses, assets, headcount, total funding.
- Inc42, “Karbon Card Raises INR 55 Cr Debt Finance From Northern Arc, UCIC & Oxyzo” (May 2022) — debt round, investors, customer count, equity backers.
- Business Standard / YourStory / Indian Startup News — “Karbon Card raises $15 mn Series A” (February 2022) — Series A lead and participants, total equity raised.
- Business Today, “RBI bars non-bank PPIs from loading credit lines” (June 2022) — the 20 June 2022 RBI circular.
- Cyril Amarchand / Shardul Amarchand / IndiaCorpLaw commentary (2022) — impact of the PPI credit-line ban on card fintechs.
- ZaubaCorp / Tracxn / Captable (thebalancesheet.in) — Interropac Private Limited legal entity, CIN U74999KA2018PTC133447, incorporation date.
- Y Combinator company page and PYMNTS (2020–2021) — founding, YC batch, early funding.
- Karbon Business official site and support pages (2025–2026) — product lines, forex outward remittance, up-to-1% fee.
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