The payment gateway startup, Cashfree (1), talks with new and existing investors to secure 20 to 25 million USD. If successful, it would be the second investment for a payment gateway in the country in 2020. Recently, Razorpay bagged a 100 million USD round to enter the unicorn club. Notably, GIC, based in Singapore, and Sequoia Capital led the fundraising.
As per the anonymous sources, the private equity asset manager, Apis Partners, based in London, is one of the new investors. Cashfree has finalized the deal’s contours, and it would lead to a funding round with existing investors. The anonymous source further added that the agreement is set to announce the deal if everything goes according to the plan in a few weeks.
Cashfree, a payment startup backed by Y-combinator, has secured over 5.6 million USD, including 5.5 million USD worth Series A funding round in April 2019 since its inception. Apart from the accelerator based in Silicon Valley, Smilegate Investments, a venture capital firm from South Korea, also invested in the Bengaluru-based startup.
It also received personal fundings from George Osborne, the former British finance minister and MD of Cholamandalam Investment. It is worth noting that, so far, Cashfree doesn’t have a single India VC firm on its table.
Cashfree Posting Profitability for Three Consecutive Financial Years, the Only in its Segment
The sources also added that the new Series B funding round would push the startup’s valuation around 150 million USD. It may receive more funding from new investors since Cashfree is in talks with two more investors.
Notably, Cashfree is the only Indian startup in this segment that is posting profitability for three consecutive financial years. The firm had published 1.4 crore INR and 4.1 crore INR profit after tax in 2018 and 2019. The company’s unaudited financials claim that it has made 19.5 crore INR profit after tax in 2020.
Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta founded the startup in 2015. It offers over half a dozen products, including payouts, auto collect, payment gateway, UPI stack, and marketplace settlement. Moreover, Cashfree has also rolled out payment APIs for some top startups and companies like Bigbasket, Acko, Delhivery, CRED, Zomato, Xiaomi, and HDFC.
