Inspired by the financial challenges he witnessed in his father’s business, Mahesh Bal, co-founder and CEO of Blackbird Finance, is building a platform that brings invoicing, taxation and financial compliance into one place. With early customers and Y Combinator backing, the young founder is now preparing to take the startup to its next stage.
When Mahesh Bal looked at his father’s contracting business, he noticed something that many business owners would recognise: running a business involved much more than serving customers and getting paid. Invoices had to be managed, taxes had to be filed, and financial records had to be maintained. Each task came with its own process, and getting something wrong could mean spending more time correcting it.
At 16, Bal decided to explore whether technology could make these processes easier.
Today, he is the co-founder and CEO of Blackbird Finance, a Hyderabad-based fintech startup working to simplify financial management for freelancers, remote workers and businesses dealing with international clients. The idea is straightforward: instead of making users move between multiple platforms to manage different financial tasks, bring those workflows together in one place.
What began as a project at a hackathon organised by IIT Hyderabad has since developed into a startup with paying customers, early funding and a place in Y Combinator’s Winter 2027 batch.
But the journey from identifying a problem to building a financial product has also involved learning from mistakes, improving calculations and understanding what customers actually need.
The Problem Was Closer to Home Than He Expected
Bal’s interest in finance and entrepreneurship grew alongside his studies in commerce, accounting, economics and artificial intelligence. His father’s work as a contractor gave him a practical view of the difficulties businesses face while managing their finances.
He saw how invoices, GST filings and other financial tasks could become time-consuming, particularly when errors meant additional work or professional assistance.
The problem was not limited to his family. Freelancers and software agencies earning money from overseas clients face similar challenges. Receiving an international payment does not necessarily complete the process; businesses may still need to organise invoices, maintain records and obtain relevant documentation for compliance.
Bal began thinking about how these separate activities could be managed through a single platform.In January 2026, he met his future co-founders at an IIT Hyderabad hackathon. The team included Arahan, who became the CTO; Sahash, the CFO; and Satrik, the COO.
Their first version of the product was relatively simple. It allowed users to track income, expenses, revenue, net profit and taxes. The team presented the idea, received feedback from the judges and continued working on it.
Initially, the project was not necessarily intended to become a startup. As the founders spoke to potential users through LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram and freelancer communities, however, they began to understand that the problem was worth solving on a larger scale.
That feedback gradually shaped Blackbird Finance into a business.
One Platform for the Financial Work Behind a Business
For a freelancer working with clients in the United States or Europe, managing finances can involve several different services. One platform may handle payments, another may help with invoicing, while tax filing and supporting documentation require additional steps.
Blackbird Finance wants to reduce that fragmentation.
The platform is designed to help users track their income and expenses, manage invoices, prepare tax reports and organise financial records. It also aims to automate parts of the compliance process, particularly for users who do not have a dedicated finance team.
Bal describes the product as a financial operating system. The intention is to manage the financial work happening behind a business so that founders and independent professionals can spend less time on administration.
The company is initially focusing on freelancers, remote software developers, consultants and software agencies, especially those earning internationally.
Rather than positioning itself solely as a payment processor or invoicing tool, Blackbird Finance is attempting to connect several parts of the financial workflow.
That ambition also creates a challenge: bringing different services together is useful only when the integrations work properly and the information remains accurate.
Bringing AI Into Everyday Financial Tasks
Artificial intelligence is central to how Blackbird Finance hopes to make financial management easier. The company has integrated large language model capabilities that allow users to interact with financial information through natural-language prompts. A user, for example, could ask how much tax is owed for a particular month or request a summary of transactions.
The platform is designed to organise the relevant information and generate reports. Bal also described workflows intended to automate selected tasks, including aspects of tax preparation and filing.
The idea is to make the process less dependent on manually navigating different sections of a platform.
For small businesses and freelancers, this could be particularly useful when financial administration competes with the time they need to spend on clients and business development.
However, financial automation comes with little room for guesswork. Tax calculations must follow applicable rules, transaction records must be accurate, and sensitive information must be handled carefully.
For Blackbird Finance, the challenge is not simply adding AI features. It is making those features useful while maintaining the reliability expected of financial software.
Early Customers Helped Reveal What Needed Fixing
Blackbird Finance launched its minimum viable product in July 2026. The first customers gave the team an opportunity to see how the platform performed outside its initial development environment.
One of the early users was a chartered accountancy firm in Hyderabad. Feedback from early customers exposed issues with GST calculations, generated reports, integrations and data-access controls.
These were important lessons for a product handling financial information. A platform might appear to work during development, but actual users can reveal gaps that are difficult to anticipate beforehand.
The team began addressing these issues and introduced a validation process for GST calculations.
Bal reported 99.49% GST accuracy, which he said was validated using GSTZen’s validation system. He also shared a result from a client test in which the relevant GST filing workflow took approximately four minutes and 34 seconds to complete.
These figures were reported by the founder during the interview and should be understood in the context of the company’s own testing and validation process.
The startup is also expanding its integrations. At the time of the interview, six of the 12 planned integrations had been implemented.
For the team, product development has involved more than adding new features. It has also meant correcting errors, improving how different services communicate and strengthening controls around customer information. That process of identifying weaknesses and fixing them has become an important part of the product’s development.
Competing by Connecting the Dots
During the interview, Bal identified Zoho, Tally Solutions and Skydo as competitors operating in related areas of business finance.
These platforms address different needs, from accounting and invoicing to international payment collection. Blackbird Finance is approaching the problem by focusing on how these activities fit together.
Its proposition is that freelancers and smaller businesses should not have to manage every financial task through a separate tool when many of those workflows are connected.
The opportunity lies in reducing the administrative work involved in managing payments, records, invoices and taxes. The challenge is delivering that convenience without compromising accuracy, security or reliability.
As the startup grows, the quality of its integrations and the trust it earns from customers will be just as important as the number of features it offers.
From ₹10 Lakh to Y Combinator
Blackbird Finance’s early progress has also helped it secure financial backing.
Before joining Y Combinator, the company raised ₹10 lakh from an angel investor connected to one of its founders. Bal said the money helped the team develop the product, build the team and support its early operations.
The startup subsequently secured a place in Y Combinator’s Winter 2027 batch. During the interview, Bal described the programme’s funding as $580,000.
He also mentioned discussions with investors associated with the Y Combinator network, although no additional investment amount was disclosed.
For a young founder building in a complex sector such as fintech, the next stage will involve turning early interest into sustained product adoption. Funding can support that work, but customer retention, reliable operations and continued product improvement will determine how effectively the company grows.
The Next Target: 3,500 Users and $12 Million in Transactions
Blackbird Finance has set ambitious goals for its next phase.
During the interview, Bal reported 132 active users, including approximately 41 paying clients. The company aims to grow to at least 3,500 active users, work with more than 50 software studios and increase its transaction volume to $12 million.
These are future targets, not milestones the company has already achieved.
The team is also looking beyond India over the longer term. Its current focus is on Indian financial workflows, particularly GST and related compliance requirements. Eventually, Bal wants to adapt the platform to the tax and regulatory requirements of other markets.
The broader ambition is to build a global compliance operating system that can help businesses manage financial administration across different jurisdictions.
Achieving that will require the company to understand different regulatory environments and adapt its product accordingly. For now, its immediate priority is to strengthen the existing platform and expand its customer base.
What Competitive Robotics Taught Him About Fintech
Bal’s experience in competitive robotics has also influenced the way he approaches product development.
He explained during the interview that robotics taught him to break complex systems into smaller components, test them individually and understand why something failed rather than rely on assumptions.
That approach carries over into financial software, where even a small error in a calculation or an overlooked compliance requirement can affect the product’s reliability.
Robotics also taught him something about teamwork. Building a complex product requires people with different skills, clear responsibilities and the ability to work towards a shared goal.
At Blackbird Finance, the team gathers feedback from users and uses it to guide product improvements. Issues identified by customers are passed to the people responsible for development, helping the team decide what needs to be fixed and what should be improved next.
For Bal, the original motivation remains the same: solving a problem that takes time away from running a business.
Building Beyond the First Version
Blackbird Finance is still at an early stage, and much of its larger vision remains ahead. Its reported user base, initial funding and Y Combinator selection mark important steps, but the next phase will test the team’s ability to scale the product while maintaining accuracy and customer trust.
The company is trying to solve a problem that is easy to overlook: the administrative work that continues long after a business has completed a sale or received a payment.
Bal wants Blackbird Finance to take on more of that work, giving freelancers, agencies and entrepreneurs more time to focus on their businesses.
The idea began with a problem he observed at home. Now, the challenge is to make the solution work for a much larger group of businesses—one customer, one workflow and one improvement at a time.
Interview By: Palak
