As a fund manager at a private-equity firm skims through his inbox before starting work, he finds a message from Raj Narayanam. The founder and executive chairman of Zaggle has requested a conversation with the founders of one of the PE firm’s portfolio companies working in the US. The fund manager doesn’t blink twice to make the introduction. After all, Zaggle is a limited partner in the fund.

For the latter, it’s not just a networking opportunity but a corporate-growth strategy.

Zaggle is a full-stack spend-management platform, offering services like reimbursements, corporate rewards, and vendor invoicing. Its target is to enter the US market by 2026. But instead of spending millions to set up shop and learn from trial and error, the company is gathering critical intel—where to set up offices, where to poach employees from, and what products and services work locally—sitting at home, in Hyderabad.

The route is quite unconventional: Zaggle is tapping into three PE and VC funds that cumulatively have access to over 100 B2B software-as-a-service firms.

Back home, the company is diversifying its offerings—building the widest range among Indian peers, and playing catch-up with US-based competitors like Ramp and Brex—to hedge its bets. It has either acquired or bought stakes in four companies in 2025 alone.

“We wanted to go mile-wide and inch-deep, because clients may buy one solution today, but it opens the door to sell two later,” Narayanam told The Ken. The 15-year-old company currently has over 3,400 clients in India, including Pepsico, ITC, Tata Power, and Wipro.

But India is still nascent when it comes to adopting spend management. It’s throwing the company—whose investors include Ashish Kacholia, who holds over 2% stake—in the deep end when it comes to cash flow. That’s when it has more than tripled its revenue to Rs 1,303 crore between FY22 and FY25.

Plus, educating and building confidence with CFOs takes time, Zaggle’s chief executive and managing director, Avinash Godkhindi, said in an earnings call.

So, the pivot across the Pacific is important for Zaggle. Even if it means reverse-exporting what it borrowed from the US in the first place.

The path less travelled

Listed in September 2023, Zaggle’s shares have steadily gained ground.