Banking infra startup Spense bags seed funding led by Arkam Ventures
02 Jul 2026, 12:13 PMThe round also saw participation from Razorpay Ventures, GrowthCap Ventures, and Atrium Ventures, along with angel investors including Kunal Shah (CRED), among others.
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Banking infrastructure startup Spense has raised $2.8 million in a seed funding round led by Arkam Ventures.
The round also saw participation from Razorpay Ventures, GrowthCap Ventures, and Atrium Ventures, along with angel investors including Kunal Shah (CRED), Madhusudhan E (KreditBee), Ravishankar (Active.ai), Suresh Rayasam Venkatasubbaih (LinkedIn), and Sayandeb Banerjee (The Math Company).
The Bengaluru-based startup will use the fresh capital to deepen banking partnerships, accelerate product development, expand its engineering and go-to-market teams, and launch Credit Line on UPI (CLOU), besides building out its AI-powered credit infrastructure and intelligence layer.
Spense was founded in 2022 by Pawan Kumar and Srinivas Krishnamurthy. Kumar, the CEO, previously spent over a decade in product, data science and growth roles, including a stint at LinkedIn. Krishnamurthy, the CTO, is a serial founder who has built other ventures as well.
Spense enables banks to launch asset-backed credit products, including secured credit cards and credit lines, without overhauling their existing technology infrastructure. Its bank-native platform connects core banking, deposit and card management systems in real time, helping institutions launch credit products faster.
The startup says it has partnered with seven major banks in India, powers over 2 lakh active cards, and issues more than 40,000 cards monthly, nearly 8% of the country's monthly credit card issuances. It also uses agentic AI to automate onboarding, servicing, collections and customer support.
Commenting on the raise, co-founder and CEO Pawan Kumar said the company views access to credit as fundamentally an infrastructure gap rather than a risk problem, noting that "India does not have a shortage of assets. It has a shortage of infrastructure that can convert those assets into usable credit." Co-founder and CTO Srinivas Krishnamurthy added that "the next phase of banking is the digitization of collateral itself." Bala Srinivasa, managing director, Arkam Ventures, said the fund backed the founders because it sees Spense as building foundational infrastructure for the next era of credit in India.
Spense had previously raised $1.85 million in a pre-seed round led by GrowthCap Ventures in May 2025.
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