BharatPe delivered 80x RoI to early angel investors, says company

Digital payments and lending platform provider BharatPe on Wednesday said 18 of its angel investors have exited in a recently concluded growth funding round, with returns as high as 80X in a period of two years.

The New Delhi based business has returned Rs 102 crore of cash to its secondary investors, against an initial angel stage fundraise of Rs 1.9 crore, the company said in a statement.

“Till date, there is no other Indian entrepreneur who has given this kind of exponential return to his individual angels, and that too in just 2 years of kickstarting the business,” the statement said.

Nine angel investors, including Freecharge and Cred founder Kunal Shah, continue to hold stock worth Rs 107 crore as per the latest valuation, the statement added.

The company in February announced the closing of its $108 million growth stage investment at a $900 million valuation. Seven existing investors -- Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Steadview Capital Management, Beenext, Amplo and Insight Partners -- participated in the fundraise.

BharatPe said that it allowed employee stock option (ESOP) holders and angel investors to liquidate their stakes, since the investment (dubbed Series D) was oversubscribed with institutional investors wanting to consolidate the company’s capitalisation table.

Founded in 2018, the operator of a QR code-based payment app for offline retailers and businesses has so far attracted angel investors such as Akshay Munjal from Hero Group, Kunal Shah of Cred, Amit Lakhotia Park+, Venture Catalysts, AngelList, Mitesh Shah of BookMyShow, and Kunal Khatter from AdvantEdge.

“Not a lot of people would know that this was ‘risk free’ return, as in a different scenario, I would have sold my house to make the investors good. Now heads down back to work – a lot more to be built at BharatPe. I personally am very discomforted by fundraise hype and therefore tend to underprice. I did my angel round at $3 million valuation despite all my credentials. I therefore set up my angels for an exponential outcome in case of success,” BharatPe co-founder and CEO Ashneer Grover said.

Till date, the company has raised about $268 million in equity and debt. In November 2020, it was enroute to an “aggressive” expansion plan across tier I, II and III cities in India.

Founded by Grover and Shashvat Nakrani, BharatPe currently claims to serve over 60 lakh merchants across 75 cities. It has processed over 8 crore UPI transactions a month, turning annualised transaction processed value at over $7 billion.

Additionally, the company said it has facilitated disbursement of over Rs 800 crore to its merchants since launch. Its point-of-sale business grew to $2 billion annualised transaction value in five months post launch.