New Delhi based UPI payments and digital lending startup BharatPe raised $75 Million (535 Crore) in a new financing round. The Series C round for the startup was led by NewYork headquartered Hedge fund Coatue Management and Palo Alto-based fintech investor Ribbit Capital.
What is BharatPe?
BharatPe is a Fintech (Financial Technology) startup that provides a one-stop solution to a merchant to collect UPI payments via multiple payment apps in India. With PhonePe, the merchants can start receiving payments to their bank accounts instantly. The utility app is deployed to track settlements and transactions, collect UPI QR Code payments, monitor, and manage sales.
Investments Made
According to ROC filling, both companies Ribbit and Coatue invested about $25 million (178.3 Crore) each as part of this round, summing up a total of 4,611 Series CCPS shares together.
Insight partners invested close to $8.4 Million (Rs 60.62 Crore), Steadview Capital, and Amplo put in $3.9 ( Rs 28.53 Crore) and 12.4 million (Rs 89.16 Crore) respectively.
Ashneer Grover, Co-Founder and CEO of BharatPe, addressed that “We have already disbursed around 100 crores of term loans to the merchant through partner NBFCs and are now ready to extend lines of credit to our merchants, for which we require our own NBFC to innovate.”The company applied for the license in August last year and hoping to get the license from the RBI by March.
How will the Funding help BharatPe?
The company plans to use the funding raised to scale its business in the nation. Apart from the $70 Million that would be deployed in the NBFC arm, The company plans to use the remaining amount to build technology and new products.
The company has allocated around 5% of its post-money shareholding around $21.5 Million as employee stock ownership plans to be competitive with the giants like Google, Paytm, PhonePe, and others.
Conclusion: Bharat pay raises $75 Million from Hedge fund Coatue Management and Palo Alto-based fintech investor Ribbit Capital to fund its non-banking Financial Company, Arm that is awaiting license approval from the Reserve Bank of India.
