Open, a neo-banking fintech portal, on Monday became the 96th entrant to India’s unicorn club with the announcement of its Series D funding round worth $50 million at a valuation of $1 billion.

The round was led by IIFL and also included existing investors such as Tiger Global, Temasek and 3one4 Capital.

The company plans to use the latest funding amount to launch new services, expand its existing lending books, strengthen its leadership team and also double the workforce to 1,000 from 500 currently, Open said in statement.

Founded by Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko and Ajeesh Achuthan, the Bengaluru-based firm currently works to automate business finances for small and medium enterprises and claims to power over 2.3 million SMEs — crossing over $30 billion in annualised transactions.

“We are excited to partner with IIFL and existing investors Tiger Global, Temasek and 3one4 Capital for our Series D round. We see a lot of synergies with IIFL, especially on leveraging the lending book, as we are getting ready to launch innovative products like revenue-based financing, early settlement, working capital loan and business credit cards to SMEs on our platform,” Achuthan, co-founder & CEO, Open, said.

Open plans to launch Open Flo, a revenue-based financing model; Open Settl, to help in early settlement of dues; and Open Capital, for all working capital loan needs. This would be alongside taking its recently-launched services — Zwitch and BankingStack — global, and hopes to reach over 5 million customers over the next one year.

Open raised its previous funding round, Series C, in October 2021 at half the current valuation. It soon went on to acquire consumer neo-banking platform Finin, in December 2021. The company claims to have raised over $140 million in funding since its inception. It counts Temasek, Google, Visa, Tiger Global, Beenext, Recruit Strategic Partners, 3one4 Capital, Speedinvest, Tanglin Venture Partner Advisors, Angellist, and Unicorn India Ventures as its investors.