The Story of Zeni: Building the Future of Startup Finance Operations

The Story of Zeni: Building the Future of Startup Finance Operations

Sometimes the most compelling startup ideas come from experiencing the same problem multiple times. For twin brothers Swapnil Shinde and Snihal Shinde, it took founding two successful companies before they fully understood the financial operations challenges that would lead to creating Zeni.

From Spotify for Indian Music to AI-Powered Travel

Before Zeni, the Shinde brothers had already built and sold two successful companies. Their first venture, Dhingana, grew to “almost 10 million unique listeners listening to it from 100 countries around the world” before being acquired by RDO. Their second company, Mezzi, an “AI powered travel assistant for business travelers,” was acquired by American Express.

But it was the pain points they experienced while running these companies that would plant the seeds for their next venture. As Swapnil explains, managing startup finances was “extremely painful because typically what startups do is like they hire a part time bookkeeper to manage their books. Then they have an admin who takes care of their bill payments and expense management. At some point they need a temp CFO, so they go hire a temp CFO.”

The Breaking Point

The real wake-up call came during their time running Mezzi. Swapnil recalls a pivotal moment: “I literally remember a scenario where at Mezzi, I asked my finance team that, hey, why did our burn rate increase by 30%? And I was already sitting at the end of the next month and I was asking about the previous month because that is when the books were closed.”

After days of back-and-forth, they discovered the increase was due to automated Facebook ad spending. This delay in financial visibility highlighted a crucial problem: startup founders were operating with outdated financial information, forcing them to be reactive rather than proactive with their finances.

Building the Solution

This experience led to Zeni’s core mission: transforming reactive financial management into proactive oversight. “We wanted to build a platform that can automate your bookkeeping and accounting to a level where we almost do a virtual close on your book every single day,” Swapnil explains.

The solution wasn’t just about technology – it was about fundamentally changing how financial services are delivered. While traditional firms charge by the hour, creating incentives to work slower, Zeni took a different approach: “We are incentivized to automate stuff for you because we are a SaaS platform. So it completely changes the ballgame.”

Scaling Through Human-AI Collaboration

Today, Zeni manages “more than $1 billion in finances every single month” across nearly 400 startups. The company has grown to “close to 260 employees, five offices, two in US, three India.” But what makes their approach unique is the balance between automation and expertise: “AI cannot power 100% of it. So we have a dedicated team of finance experts who collaborate with AI to stitch an experience that is ten x faster than what you might have today.”

The Future of Finance Operations

Looking ahead, Swapnil envisions Zeni evolving into “that one all in one finance operation platform that uses Gen AI to run your entire finance department for you.” The key transition will be shifting from “people assisting the platform to do your accounting and bookkeeping” to where “the platform will start assisting the other human experts.”

This vision extends beyond just the U.S. market. As Swapnil explains, “The problem that we are solving is global, and the platform that we are building is a country less and currencyless platform. So hopefully we can take it global in the next five years as well.”

For the Shinde brothers, what started as a solution to their own startup challenges has evolved into a mission to transform how companies manage their finances. By combining AI automation with human expertise, they’re not just building a company – they’re creating a new category in financial operations.