• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, October 22, 2019

To help more businesses develop useful apps, Instabase just raised $105 million in a Series B round of funding led by Index Ventures.

Existing investors -- including Greylock Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and Andreessen Horowitz -- all participated in this latest round, which values Instabase at just over $1 billion.

Instabase plans to use the money to grow its workforce — which currently consists of 42 employees — and build out its core platform.

Founded in 2015, the company specializes in helping businesses build complex applications. Along with more customized work, Instabase is also fleshing out an app store, which includes pre-packaged business apps for different industries.

Among other categories, Instabase’s app offerings span identity and income verification, adverse media and contract analysis, and trade finance.

“Today, on your smartphone, you have an app store where you can find a dozen apps to have food delivered to your door, but we don’t have an app store where large enterprises, for example, a bank can find an app for income verification,” according to Anant Bhardwaj, founder-CEO of Instabase.

Of course, Bhardwaj is trying to change that.

At present, Bhardwaj said Instabase is already working with more than half of the top 10 financial institutions in the United States.

Among other such partnerships, Standard Chartered Bank commissioned Instabase to automate its client onboarding, credit documentation, and “know your customer” (or KYC) processes, in 2018.

In addition to the funding, Sarah Cannon, a partner at Index Ventures, is expected to join Instabase’s board of directors.