Digital payments company Transerv raises funds from Indiabulls arm

Mumbai-based digital payments company Transerv Pvt. Ltd has raised $6.7 million (Rs 46 crore) from Indiabulls Ventures Ltd to diversify its offerings in lending and payments solutions.

Indiabulls has agreed to acquire a 42% stake in Transerv, the financial services company said in a stock-exchange filing. Indiabulls will pay Rs 167 per share, it said, without elaborating on the number of shares it will buy.

The investment will be made through Indiabulls Consumer Finance Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Indiabulls Ventures.

TranServ provides online payment solutions to both consumers and businesses. Its products include prepaid cards, mobile cards, remittance cards and gift cards.

For enterprise customers, it offers customised solutions such as employee cards, sales channel incentive cards and customer engagement card-based solutions.

Its payment solutions are offered under the brand Shmart!Pay while its Udio wallet allows users to make peer-to-peer transactions, split bills and make group payments.

The company was founded in 2011 by Anish Williams, Amar Habibullah, Anand Kapadia, Sandeep Ghule and Aditya Gupta. In April 2016, Transerv raised $15 million (Rs 100 crore then) in a Series C funding round led by venture capital fund IDFC SPICE and consumer electronics maker Micromax Informatics Ltd. Its other backers include Nirvana Venture Advisors and Faering Capital.

Indiabulls Ventures, part of the financial services-focussed Indiabulls Group, had in November last year raised Rs 1,539.20 crore ($210 million) from four foreign institutional investors, including a private equity firm, to infuse long-term capital into two units.