Digital payments and business banking platform Razorpay reeled in $160m in its Series E round of funding at a valuation of $3bn, barely six months after it raised funding that catapulted it in the unicorn club.
Investors in the round included Sequoia India, Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC Pte along with participation from Ribbit Capital and Matrix Partners. With the current round along with its recent $100m Series D in 2020, the firm’s total funds raised comes to $366.5m so far.
Founded in 2014, the Bangalore-headquartered company, which offers payment, lending, and banking solutions for merchants and enterprises, will use the funds to expand into Southeast Asia. It is also in the process of acquiring a SaaS startup and grow its neobank Razorpay X by developing new products. These products will be designed to enhance convenience, security, manage expenses better and help minimise a company’s financial risk in an increasingly uncertain digital environment.
With a clientele including food delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato, Facebook, Cred, ICICI Prudential and Ola, the startup has seen 300% growth in both volume and revenues during the financial year ending in March, it said.
Commenting on the funding, Razorpay CEO and co-founder Harshil Mathur said, “We at Razorpay want to be the one-stop financial platform that a business needs to simplify and manage their end-to-end money movement. We have made some strides towards that journey, our recent initiatives in the Banking and Lending space through RazorpayX and Capital have helped businesses solve some very unique challenges around managing money, empowering businesses to grow up to 10X in an economically challenging year.
“There’s more work to be done. We believe there’s a dire need to develop new banking technologies that meet the rising demand. And so we plan to use these funds to further expand our banking and lending product suite so that we not only provide a better experience to businesses and their customers but significantly contribute to the growth of our partner businesses.”
Detailing on the firm’s expansion plans, Mathur said, “Today, geographies like South East Asian countries face similar payment issues like India and Razorpay will look to leverage its leadership in building intelligent payment products and learnings to ripe markets like South-east Asian countries. The company has been working on market research, understanding the payment needs of SEA businesses and plans to hire on-ground teams in building a payment acceptance layer and work with multiple stakeholders on product customisation.”
Highlighting the company’s acquisition strategy, Razorpay co-founder Shashank Kumar said, “We’re always evaluating products and technologies that automate long and arduous money movement, accounting and other banking processes, thereby allowing businesses to focus more on their growth. In the next 12 months, Razorpay will look to introduce more such products, through strategic partnerships and acquisitions which fit into our vision of making financial infrastructure easy and available to businesses across the country.”
The FinTech firm competes with companies such as BillDesk, CC Avenues, Paytm and PayU in the payment gateway business and with others such as Jupiter, Niyo and Open in neobanking.
Seemingly, the Indian FinTech sector is booming as earlier this month, Groww and CRED entered the unicorn club along with other six startups.
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