SAN FRANCISCO — Vartana, a provider of managed checkout and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options for businesses, has launched with $57 million in seed funding. The new capital includes $7 million in equity led by technology firm Audacious Ventures and $50 million in debt from i80 Group, a specialty finance firm providing capital and support to breakthrough fintech and proptech companies. Participation in the round also included Flex Capital and several prominent angel investors including Shoaib Makani, Joe Kraus, Bipul Sinha, Allen Shim, Adil Syed and others.
The company was founded in 2020 by Kush Kella and Ahmed Sharif who worked together at KeepTruckin and dealt with the pain of broken contract management and payments infrastructure required to go from signed order to cash collected. They built Vartana to equip companies with a managed checkout platform to help them close more deals, faster. The Vartana platform provides technology buyers a variety of payment options while providing technology vendors tools to close contracts and generate sustainable cash with prepaid deals.
“We create a win-win scenario for both buyers and sellers of SaaS and other technology products. Buyers can solve budget constraints by paying on a schedule that works for them, while sellers get paid upfront and eliminate churn on deals,” said Kush Kella, CEO and cofounder of Vartana. “Our platform is the first-ever managed checkout platform to accelerate enterprise sales and we’re excited to work with stellar investors to help us bring it to market.”
Vartana works with mid to late stage technology companies and their resellers. The platform pre-approves customers in the sales funnel for payment plans through real-time automated underwriting technology. Customers can then choose their preferred payment options and complete transactions within a few minutes through an integrated checkout experience.
“Vartana offers an innovative, new checkout experience for companies that are buying and selling technology products. With the built-in functionality for vendors to offer financing options to their customers, Vartana’s checkout offering is a no-brainer for B2B vendors and can be a huge boost for their sales teams,” said Nakul Mandan, Founder and Partner at Audacious Ventures.
With the new capital, Vartana plans to invest in product development by doubling its engineering capacity and support its growing number of vendor partners with new hires in sales and operations.
“Businesses today expect to have flexibility on how they pay. Vartana provides a turn-key checkout and payments experience for B2B transactions that scales with its customers. We’re excited to be a key part of accelerating Vartana’s growth,” said Peter Frank, Principal at i80 Group.
