BusinessNext raises $40 million from ServiceNow for SEA and Australia expansion
BusinessNext has raised $40 million from ServiceNow Ventures, valuing the Noida-based banking software firm at $700 million—up from $181 million in 2021. The deal gives ServiceNow a 5% stake and opens BusinessNext's acce
Bengaluru/Mumbai: Autonomous banking platform BusinessNext has raised $40 million in a Series B round from ServiceNow Ventures, the venture capital arm of US-based cloud computing software company ServiceNow.
The new round has led investors to bump the company's valuation to $700 million, significantly higher than its last reported valuation of $181 million in 2021. With the investment, ServiceNow will hold roughly a 5% stake in the Noida-based company.
“…what this investment does is give us market access very quickly,” said company chief executive and co-founder Nishant Singh, in an interview with Mint. “We get access to the entire go-to-market structure that ServiceNow has, which is a large team across several geographies.”
The partnership with ServiceNow gives the Noida-based startup access to newer markets in Southeast Asia, as well as New Zealand and Australia. While the company already has feelers out for what it called ‘quick wins,’ Singh declined to comment on how much they'd contribute overall, given that these would be partnerships with ServiceNow. “I see it being a strong contributor of revenue.”
BusinessNext had last raised a $16 million equity round in 2021, co-led by Avataar Ventures and Ascent Capital.
Amid AI push
The company's round comes at a time when enterprises globally are accelerating the deployment of artificial intelligence in their workflows and internal ecosystems. While banks have traditionally been the fastest adopters of frontier technologies, AI has made it so that they remain cautious, on account of its blackbox, i.e. inexplicable, nature.
Areas where banks are deploying AI, like other enterprises, include back-office roles such as customer complaint classification, bias elimination, and even contact centre roles. It's why BusinessNext has seen its platform solutions across lending, customer service and agentic solutions pick up.
"Banks will have to shift compliance from retrospective auditing to real-time software engineering. Regulators will not accept a ‘black box’ excuse for breaches,” said Anupam Shukla, partner at Pioneer Legal. To stay compliant, he said banks need strict access controls, isolated cloud systems, and a fully auditable trail of every AI agent's actions.
Some of BusinessNext's competitors in the space include customer relationship management behemoth Salesforce, homegrown small and medium business-focused Zoho, Nasdaq-listed Freshworks, Hubspot, Leadsquared and a few others.
At the same time, AI is making banks look for ways to improve efficiency. “AI is not a push for our customers, it's a pull. Boards want to do more with AI because they're optimising for more revenue per employee,” said Singh.
Leading clients
Today, the startup works with several leading financial institutions in the country, including HDFC Bank, SBI General, Axis Bank, Jana Small Finance Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, IndusInd Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Ujjivan Small Finance Bank.
The company's clientele accounts for 55% of its overall revenue, with the balance coming from Europe, West Asia, Africa, and Southeast Asia (25%) and the US (20%). As of FY25, BusinessNext's revenue stood at ₹312 crore, with net profit at ₹3.1 crore, according to data from Tracxn.
While Singh said that the company remains bullish on an India listing, it doesn't have a timeline in place just yet. This year's public market offerings by startups have slowed considerably due to volatility caused by the war in West Asia between the US and Iran. Several companies have delayed their listings, including PhonePe and Flipkart.
“…it is expected that pure-play technology companies should benefit from the Indian IPO market. Having said this, such companies may take a cautious approach given their global revenue model rather than the Indian consumer-focused model and prevalent IPO window conditions…,” said Narendra Dingankar, partner at Pioneer Legal.
About the Authors
Rwit Ghosh
Rwit is a correspondent at Mint covering India’s burgeoning startup ecosystem and the venture capital and private equity firms that back them. Sitting out of Bengaluru, he writes on the new-age tech businesses that the city and the rest of the country seems to continuously be birthing.
While Rwit’s interests lie in covering the new wave of deeptech, AI, SaaS and consumer tech businesses, he’ll write on consumer brands and fintech (if someone repeatedly explains these sectors to him).
When he’s not scrolling through the Indian startup forums on Reddit, Rwit is usually trying to figure out early signs of what’s to come next in the ecosystem. As a result, he’s been early to spot trends like VCs becoming more active in backing deeptech, funding bottlenecks for agentic AI startups and a potential revival in edtech through AI.
Prior to his ongoing stint at Mint, Rwit worked at NDTV Profit as a social media producer while also working on his own stories for the TV channel after he graduated from the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai.
When he’s not working on stories, he can be found trying to figure out where he should go to eat next in Bengaluru, or what his next tattoo should look like. If you see him in the wild, you should ask him how he pronounces his name. He’s definitely not tired of being asked about it.
Mansi Verma
Mansi Verma is a senior correspondent covering private capital in India for Mint. Think of strategy shifts, private equity and venture capital deals, the companies trying to go public, and occasionally, the ones falling apart.
She moved into this beat in 2022, and has been following it closely since. Prior to Mint, Mansi worked at Moneycontrol, where she covered jobs and edtech, reporting extensively on the 2022–2024 startup and IT layoffs cycle. Her work during this period focused on what happens to fast-growing companies when capital dries up, combining financial reporting with human-interest stories.
Mansi reported closely on Byju’s during a critical phase in its unravelling, and has since built a strong understanding of edtech businesses, particularly unicorns, and the deeper structural challenges in education that many of them have struggled to solve. At Mint, she follows the flow of capital across VC and PE deals, exits and IPO pipelines, while also tracking large investment firms, and the financial services sector.
Outside of the newsroom, Mansi spends time exploring how technology is changing the way people think and work, while actively attempting to build a critical thinking human brain in the age of short-form everything.
She holds a Master’s degree in journalism and has moderated industry discussions on financial services and investments.
Source: Livemint — Companies
