Ribbit Capital, Steadview Capital lead $50 mn Series B in BharatPe

Digital payments startup BharatPe has raised $50 million in Series B round of funding led by fintech investor Ribbit Capital and London-based hedge fund Steadview Capital.

Existing investors including Sequoia Capital India, Beenext Capital and Insight Partners also participated in the round, the New Delhi-based company said in a statement. 

The company has raised $92.5 million of funding till now,  including the current Series B round.

“The funding will help us in further strengthening our lending business and consolidating our market leadership in QR payments offline," said Ashneer Grover, co-founder and chief executive officer, BharatPe.

The quick response (QR) code-based payments platform plans to ensure the availability of easy and cheap credit for merchants and accepting digital payments free for all offline businesses, the statement said. 

It has started disbursing loans to merchants on its platform and aims to become the business utility app for more than 20 million offline merchants across India for all their business needs, the company added.

It aims to serve five million merchants on its network by next year. “We are determined to serve the small merchant community in India, which was largely underserved by financial institutions till date,” Grover said.

The company claimed that within a year of launch, it has achieved $1 billion annualised total payment volume (TPV) and facilitates over 18 million unified payments interface (UPI) transactions monthly. 

BharatPe was founded in 2018 by Grover and Shashvat Nakrani. It operates in 20 cities and serves over 1.5 million merchants across Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Indore, Bhopal, Nagpur, Chandigarh, Jodhpur, Ludhiana, Surat, Patna, Karimnagar, Mysore, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Warangal. 

In April, it had raised $15.5 million in a Series A round of funding. The US-based investment firm Insights Partners joined existing investors Sequoia and Beenext in the round, the company added.