Bengaluru: CUPI, a digital business expense management platform, is targeting thousands of businesses over the next 12–24 months as companies increasingly look to move away from traditional employee reimbursements towards real-time, digital expense management.
Built around UPI-led business payments, automation and real-time visibility, CUPI enables employees to make business-related payments without having to use their personal money, while giving businesses greater control over spending. The platform has onboarded businesses including XYXX, Hastsun Agro Products, Microlabs, MRF and more.
For many businesses, everyday expenses continue to involve employees paying upfront, retaining bills and submitting reimbursement claims, followed by manual processing by finance teams. This can create delays, paperwork and limited visibility into how and where company funds are being spent.
CUPI is designed to address this gap by bringing business payments and expense management onto a digital, real-time platform. Instead of employees paying first and seeking reimbursement later, businesses can enable direct payments for work-related expenses while maintaining visibility and control over spending.
“Businesses have become accustomed to instant digital payments in their personal lives, but workplace expenses are still often managed through an older reimbursement-led process,” said Nithin Prakash, Co-founder & CEO, CUPI. “With CUPI, our focus is to make business expenses as simple to pay and manage as everyday UPI transactions, while giving finance teams the visibility and control they need.”
CUPI combines UPI-based payments with automation to simplify business spending, including expense tracking, approvals, categorisation and reporting. According to the company, its platform has helped customers reduce the time spent managing expenses by up to 90%, while reducing the manual effort involved in tracking and processing business expenses. The time and administrative effort saved can translate into greater employee efficiency and confidence in managing business expenses.
The platform is particularly relevant for businesses with frequent operational spending and employees making payments across locations, including startups, SMEs, sales-led businesses, logistics, retail and service businesses.
CUPI sees an opportunity to expand the role of UPI beyond consumer transactions and into the everyday financial operations of businesses. As companies increasingly adopt digital payments, the platform believes there is an opportunity to make business spending more real-time, transparent and automated.
Over the next 12–24 months, CUPI plans to expand its customer base, increase transaction volumes and introduce further UPI, AI and automation-led capabilities for business expense management.
“Our ambition is to make real-time expense management the norm for businesses,” added Nithin Prakash, Co-founder & CEO, CUPI. “We are building towards a future where employees no longer need to use their personal money for routine business expenses and finance teams no longer have to rely on paperwork and manual reimbursement processes to understand company spending.”
“Our ambition is to help transform how millions of Indian businesses manage and move money,” said Nithin Prakash, Co-founder & CEO, CUPI. “We believe business expenses should be as seamless and real-time as any other digital payment. By eliminating the need for employees to use their personal money and reducing dependence on manual reimbursements, we want to build the infrastructure that enables Indian businesses to manage everyday spending with greater speed, visibility and control. The impact goes beyond saving time; when employees no longer have to think twice about spending from their own pockets, they can make business decisions with greater confidence. For instance, instead of choosing a more affordable option for a client meeting simply to avoid an out-of-pocket expense, employees can use the budget allocated by the business more effectively and focus on delivering a better client experience.”
