Fintech startup AxiTrust raised ₹23.5 crore in a seed funding round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Atrium Angels, YAN Network, Supermorpheous, and several individual angels. The company announced the fundraise and highlighted its plan to use the capital to build India’s most comprehensive digital infrastructure for surety bonds. AxiTrust aims to reshape the way businesses, financial institutions, and government bodies handle trust, guarantees, and risk in commercial transactions.
AxiTrust’s founders — Aditya Tulsian, Rajeev Chari, and Mukund Daga — launched the company in 2024 with a clear mission. They want to replace traditional, collateral-heavy bank guarantees with digital, insurance-backed surety bonds. Their platform blends fintech innovation with deep expertise in insurance and risk management, and they want to drive large-scale adoption of surety bonds across India.
Why Investors Back AxiTrust
General Catalyst and the other investors chose to support AxiTrust because the founders demonstrate strong clarity of purpose and expertise in a rising segment. The surety bond market in India stands at the beginning of a major shift, driven by government reforms, the need for liquidity, and the limitations of bank guarantees. Investors believe AxiTrust can shape this evolving space by building a scalable trust infrastructure for India’s financial ecosystem.
AxiTrust plans to direct the seed capital toward strengthening its core digital stack. The team wants to build tools that insurers, banks, NBFCs, procurement platforms, and government bodies can use to create, issue, verify, and manage surety bonds. AxiTrust wants to operate as the underlying infrastructure layer that powers the entire surety ecosystem rather than a standalone product company.
AxiTrust’s Vision for a New Trust Architecture
India’s financial system relies heavily on bank guarantees, especially in sectors such as infrastructure, manufacturing, energy, logistics, government procurement, and MSME supply chains. These guarantees often require high collateral, involve slow processing cycles, and create operational friction. Many MSMEs struggle to access them because banks insist on cash margins or fixed deposits.
AxiTrust wants to solve this structural inefficiency. The founders believe that surety bonds, backed by insurance and supported by digital workflows, can free up huge amounts of locked collateral. They want to replace rigid guarantees with flexible, tech-enabled, trust-building mechanisms.
CEO Aditya Tulsian explained this vision clearly: “This is about building a new trust architecture for India’s financial system, one that expands opportunities for MSMEs to increase participation across government and private supply chains.” His statement reflects the core philosophy of AxiTrust — trust should not depend on collateral alone; it should flow through transparent, digital, insurance-driven mechanisms that reduce friction and unlock economic opportunity.
How AxiTrust Enables the Shift to Surety Bonds
AxiTrust serves as an enabler rather than a direct issuer. The platform partners with insurers and financial institutions to create digital surety products suited for diverse use cases. The company also integrates with procurement platforms, contractor onboarding systems, supply chain finance players, and enterprise ERPs to streamline surety workflows.
AxiTrust focuses on three key pillars:
1. Digital Infrastructure Layer
The company builds the digital rails that allow seamless creation, verification, and monitoring of surety bonds. Traditional guarantees involve manual work and extensive paperwork. AxiTrust replaces these processes with APIs, electronic agreements, and automated workflows.
2. Trust and Risk Intelligence
The platform uses analytics and risk models to help insurers assess surety risks more efficiently. Banks and enterprises gain visibility into the credibility of counterparties. By offering transparent data layers, AxiTrust strengthens business trust.
3. Liquidity and Credit Enablement
When businesses no longer tie up capital in collateral, they gain liquidity. MSMEs, in particular, benefit from easier access to procurement opportunities, contracts, and supply chain participation because they no longer need to hand over fixed deposits or cash margins.
Through these pillars, AxiTrust enables India’s financial ecosystem to move toward a more flexible, scalable, and inclusive surety-based model.
Why Surety Bonds Matter for India’s MSMEs
MSMEs form the backbone of India’s economy, but they frequently face credit constraints. Traditional bank guarantees act as barriers because they require upfront collateral. MSMEs lose liquidity, and many fail to compete for tenders or supply contracts because of these limitations.
AxiTrust wants to unlock this trapped potential. Surety bonds allow businesses to secure commitments without pledging cash or assets. Insurance-backed surety instruments reduce friction for both parties — the business and the contracting body. MSMEs gain freedom to bid for more projects, take larger orders, and scale operations.
In addition, surety bonds promote transparency. They create clear responsibilities and offer structured protection mechanisms through insurers. As adoption grows, they can deepen trust across India’s financial landscape.
AxiTrust’s Strategic Role in India’s Surety Ecosystem
The Indian government has encouraged the use of surety bonds in place of bank guarantees for infrastructure and procurement projects. As this policy shift accelerates, the country needs platforms that provide secure, scalable digital infrastructure. AxiTrust positions itself at the center of this transformation.
The company collaborates with insurers to design products, with financial institutions to integrate workflows, and with procurement platforms to implement surety-based verification systems. AxiTrust ensures high-speed deployment, data security, and compliance, allowing every stakeholder to adopt surety solutions without disruption.
AxiTrust wants to function as the infrastructure backbone that supports India’s fast-growing surety economy. It doesn’t compete with insurers or banks; instead, it empowers them to issue and manage surety bonds efficiently.
Founders Bring Deep Domain Expertise
Co-founders Aditya Tulsian, Rajeev Chari, and Mukund Daga bring strong experience from fintech, risk management, insurance, and enterprise systems. Their backgrounds allow them to tackle the technical and regulatory challenges that surety bonds present. They built AxiTrust with a clear understanding of India’s fragmented guarantee landscape and the limitations that businesses face.
The founders believe that India needs a modern trust framework to drive long-term economic growth. They want AxiTrust to play that foundational role.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Surety in India
AxiTrust wants to accelerate the transition from traditional guarantees to surety-backed instruments across industries. As more platforms integrate with surety infrastructure, businesses will gain easier access to credit, liquidity, and contracts.
India stands on the verge of a massive shift in how it handles risk and trust. AxiTrust plans to use its seed funding to push this transition forward. The company wants to empower MSMEs, unlock capital efficiency, and build a more resilient financial system.
With strong investor backing and a mission-driven team, AxiTrust aims to lead India into a new era of digital trust, where technology, insurance, and financial infrastructure come together to support inclusive growth.
Also Read – Why Fintech Startups Bet Big on India’s Tier-2 Cities