KarmaLife, an earnings-linked financial solutions provider for the gig and blue-collar workforce, and an Early Wage Access (EWA) platform in India, has raised Rs 44 crore in an extension to its pre-series funding round led by Krishna Bhupal’s family office and existing investor, Artha Venture Fund, among others.

The financing round saw participation from other existing investors, including Net Graph Investments, Singularity Ventures, LogX Venture Partners, Balesh Sharma, Amit Jain, Vikram Kailas, and Shaji Kumar Devakar.

Founded by Rohit Rathi, Naveen Budda, and Badal Malick in March 2020, KarmaLife operates in a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) model and has partnered with over 50 organisations, which includes Flipkart, Elastic run, Uber, Porter, Delhivery, and others, to give their employees an option to access their payout before payday.

Rohit Rathi, Co-founder and CEO of KarmaLife, says, “The Company plans to use the fresh capital for scaling, expanding into different geographies, launching more products, and spreading awareness about the product. We welcome this funding round, which reaffirms our investors’ alignment with KarmaLife’s mission. Together, we aim to drive financial inclusion and offer alternatives to predatory lending. Our unwavering goal is to transform the financial lives of millions of blue-collar workers.”

The company, in a statement, said that it has impacted the lives of 2.7 lakh workers so far. It offers personalised, subscription-based credit products, such as Earned Wage Access and dynamic Line-of-Credit, based on a proprietary real-time credit scoring system called ‘KarmaScore.’ KarmaLife claims that it currently serves over 1,00,000+ blue-collar workers through its platform, continually striving to expand its reach and impact.

“KarmaLife is creating a long-term business that is underserved not only in India but in markets globally. We share the business' growth plans as a portfolio investment, and more importantly, the impact of the business connects a few hundred million Blue-collar and gig entrepreneurs into a network-based approach to transparently access credit, which is sustainable and affordable,” says Krishna Bhupal, Chairman of his family office.

Earned Wage Access (‘EWA’) gives individuals access to a portion of their earned but unpaid salary any time before their payday, freeing up employees and employers from the traditional pay cycle.

Anirudh A Damani, Managing Partner of Artha Venture Fund, says, “The KarmaLife team’s commitment to empowering the blue-collar and gig workforce resonates deeply with our vision of fostering an inclusive financial landscape. To say we're eager to fuel their ongoing growth and impact would be an understatement."