Founders Everywhere: Kaustav Das
Kaustav Das is the co-founder & CEO of Efficient Capital Labs, making low cost, non-dilutive capital accessible across borders for B2B SaaS businesses
Welcome to Founders Everywhere, where we highlight the incredible people behind the companies we’ve backed at Everywhere Ventures, a global pre-seed fund supported by a community of 500 founders and operators
The cost of capital differs around the world and the United States stands out as a market where it’s relatively cheap. Unfortunately, most companies around the globe are unable to access this lower cost capital. Efficient Capital Labs (ECL) is trying to change that by harnessing the power of a company’s recurring revenue to provide immediate, non-dilutive capital to B2B SaaS companies in emerging markets. They are currently active in India and have plans for further growth in South Asia. Companies that are interested must have a US entity and will go through a dual underwriting process.
Kaustav Das, co-founder and CEO, has over 20 years of experience as a Risk Officer at various companies and was one of the first few employees of the FinTech division at American Express. Kaustav joined forces with co-founder Manish Arora, who has held several senior leadership roles in the B2B SaaS and FinTech space. Kaustav goes into more detail about how ECL is creating a means by which foreign SaaS companies can set up a US presence and gain access to US debt capital markets at much cheaper rates.
Tell us how ECL got started.
The journey began a few years ago when the CEO of a prominent revenue-based financing company approached me to be an advisor. Due to my existing advisory roles, I suggested revisiting the idea in six to seven months. During that time they experienced significant growth and the CEO proposed the idea of starting a revenue-based financing company focusing on Indian founders. After visiting India and realizing the massive opportunity, I decided to jump headfirst into it and founded Efficient Capital Labs.
What is ECL’s North Star?
Our North Star is to bridge the cost of capital gap across different geographies. Unfortunately right now, the cost of capital is dependent upon which part of the world you’re raising in. We aim to ensure financing is equally accessible regardless of where a company is based.
Tell us about some of ECL’s recent milestones.
We just raised a $7M funding round.
We plan to expand to a second market in Singapore by the end of the year.
In India, we will start lending locally in INR next quarter.
We originated $15 million in loans without a single default.
How does ECL inspire “customer love”?
The response from our customers has been overwhelmingly positive, exceeding our expectations. They appreciate the lower cost of funds, obviously. But in addition, we fund in the US, which is a significant advantage for SaaS companies targeting the US market as part of their growth strategy.
Why is ECL going to win?
We provide a holistic evaluation of companies operating in multiple geographies. We consider the entire entity, not just individual locations, enabling us to offer financing tailored to the company's overall strength. Our unique dual underwriting process involves risk assessment of the US entity as well as the entity in another geography, in this case India. It gives us a comprehensive view and access to all crucial data. Our success in originating over $15 million in loans without a single default in the first 14 months reinforces our belief that these strategies will continue to drive future success.
Fun fact: I don’t have a driver’s license. Despite living in the US for 19 years, I've never learned how to drive and I’ve managed just fine.
Read about ECL’s $11M Series A.
Read about ECL’s $7M raise.
Check out Kaustav Das with Scott Hartley on the Venture Everywhere podcast: Efficiently Speaking, Listen now on Apple and Spotify and check out all our past episodes here!
