Joy Roy Choudhury – Kolkata
Fxkart.com, an online aggregator of RBI – licensed money changers, has tied up with several forex dealers, tour operators, travel agents and overseas educational consultants, as a part of its ongoing initiative to provide free services pan – India to its customers for carrying out forex transactions. “We are in talks with many others to expand our network in the country,” informed Dhruba Khatua, zonal business head, North and East, Fxkart.com, while speaking to Express TravelWorld.
Fxkart.com FZ LLC is a UAE based free zone company having its research and development, and marketing base at its India headquarter in Bengaluru.
At present, the company has tied up with several tour operators such as Vensimal Travel, Vayu Seva Tours & Travels, Just Holidays, Raj Tours & Travel, Swann Travels and others.
The Fin-Tech start-up, which started its operations in India in January, 2015 has 200 dealers listed currently, catering to over 1,000 locations in the country. “On an average, 1,500 to 2,000 transactions are recorded from the web platform and the mobile app each month with an average transaction size of US$ 1,000. We are witnessing a significant Y-O-Y growth of around 30 per cent,” added Khatua.
Khatua suggested that the company is all set to raise US $ 5 million in Series-A Funding by the end of this quarter. The company is in advanced stage of negotiations with several private equity players. The funds will be used for product development, increasing the dealer network and strengthening marketing effort. The company also has plans to increase the headcount at its Bengaluru facility.
The company had earlier received US $ 2 million in seed funding from its investor Dr Mushtaq Shah and strategic advisor Dr Faraz Naqvi in March last year.
Khatua feels that in the coming days, travel and tourism sector is likely to propel its growth as most of the transactions are by Indians travelling abroad on leisure, business or higher studies. He feels that outbound travel is likely to grow even further in the coming days.