Ruchi Kalra and Asish Mohapatra have become the country’s first couple to turn their respective startups into unicorns with a valuation of over $1 billion.

Kalra co-founded digital lending startup Oxyzo Financial Services, which raised maiden external funding of $200 million, making it the largest series A funding ever for an Indian startup.

The unicorn round of funding was led by Alpha Wave, Tiger Global Management, Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and Creation Investments, the company said on March 23.

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In July 2021, Kalra’s husband Asish Mohapatra-led B2B commerce platform OfBusiness reached a $1.5-billion valuation after raising funds of $160 million led by SoftBank Group Corp and others.

Apart from SoftBank, which pumped in $150 million into OfBusiness in the last round of funding, Falcon Edge Capital and Matrix Partners also invested in the platform.

Kalra, 38, and Mohapatra, 41, have both completed their education from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), although the couple met while working at McKinsey & Co.

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“We both had an itch to go out and build something,” Kalra told Bloomberg.

Both the startups, based in Gurugram, are profitable, a feat difficult for young growth companies to achieve, Bloomberg reported.

Oxyzo Financial Services started off as the lending arm of OfBusiness. It was founded in 2017 by Kalra, Mohapatra and three others. OfBusiness was founded a year earlier.

Oxyzo is a lending platform that provides cash flow and working capital financing to small businesses in manufacturing and sub-contracting sectors for buying new materials. The company later diversified its product suite to serve SMEs, mid-corporates and new economy companies.

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Formerly known as OFB Tech Pvt, OfBusiness sells industrial goods such as steel, foodgrains and industrial chemicals to SMEs. The startup claims to have achieved a valuation of about $5 billion in December last year, with SoftBank and others infusing more funds into it, Mohapatra told Bloomberg over phone.

Although the two companies have separate offices and teams, they both target the same group of industries in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.

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(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)