Ribbit Capital, Sequoia lead $75 mn funding round in Razorpay

Online payment gateway startup Razorpay Software Pvt. Ltd has raised $75 million (around Rs 524 crore at current exchange rate) in its Series C funding round co-led by Ribbit Capital and Sequoia India. The round also saw participation from its existing investors Tiger Global Management and Y Combinator.

Razorpay said, in a statement, it will use the fresh funds to develop new technologies and scale up the recently expanded product suite, neo-banking platform Razorpay X and lending arm Razorpay Capital. Significant investments will also be made to double its headcount to 700 by 2020 and hire senior members to lead different product verticals.

“We started off with a purpose to solve the payment problems that the underserved markets like MSMEs faced. Our key mission is that while our partner businesses disrupt the Indian economy with new ideas, products, experiences and new jobs, we want to power their financial systems. Today, over 350,000 disruptors have partnered with us to create the difference that we are here to make," Harshil Mathur, CEO and co-founder, Razorpay, said.

Including this round, the company’s overall equity fundraising stands at $106.5 million.

Claiming a growth rate of 500% over the last one year, the company said it targets to add 100,000 more customers to increase the number to 450,000 by 2020. Its current client base includes businesses such as IRCTC, Airtel, BookMyShow, Zomato, Swiggy, Yatra and Zerodha. Razorpay aims to achieve a revenue growth of over five times by the end of the next financial year. The company said it expects Razorpay X and Razorpay Capital, along with its non-payment gateway suite, to account for 40% of its revenue by next year.

“The digital payments market in India is massive. We are excited to be a part of a company that is building trust between the consumers and the retailers to enable payments to flow faster and more efficiently in India. We expect that, with Razorpay’s technology and support, the Indian consumer and the business owners will benefit from a more comprehensive and thorough experience,” Micky Malka, managing partner, Ribbit Capital, said.

Razorpay was set up in 2013 by IIT-Roorkee alumni Mathur and Shashank Kumar. Mathur was working at Schlumberger before launching Razorpay while Kumar previously worked with Microsoft. The firm helps businesses accept online payments via credit card, debit card, net banking and mobile wallets from end customers. Aiming to become a converged payment solutions company, Razorpay ventured into its journey 2.0 last year, diversifying its product offering for banking services and lending with a new set of products - Razorpay X and Razorpay Capital– to its existing product suite of payment gateway, subscriptions, disbursements, B2B collections and GST-enabled invoices. Razorpay X is an API (application programme interface) banking platform which enables businesses to manage all forms of payouts and receivables on Razorpay itself while Razorpay Capital is a lending marketplace targeting SMEs.

The company has 33 angel investors including Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal founders); Abhay Singhal, Amit Gupta and Naveen Tewari (InMobi founders); Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon (Freecharge founders); former chief product officer of Flipkart Punit Soni; Ram Shriram (board member and an early investor in Google); and Justin Kan (Y Combinator partner and Twitch founder). It was the second Indian company to be selected for US-based Y-Combinator accelerator programme.

In January last year, Razorpay had raised $20 million (Rs 127 crore then) in its Series B round of funding led by existing investors Tiger Global and Y Combinator, with participation from Matrix Partners. 

In July 2016, the company received an undisclosed investment from American payments and financial services company Mastercard. 

Prior to that, it raised $11.5 million from Tiger Global, Matrix Partners and Y Combinator.

Towards the end of last year, US-based hedge fund and venture investor Tiger Global bought back the shares of 140 employees. The investor bought the shares through a secondary sale at a 50% higher valuation than that of Razorpay’s previous funding round in January last year. The total payout to Razorpay’s employees would be in the range of $1-2 million (around Rs 7-14 crore), Mathur had told TechCircle.