Razorpay has raised $160 million as part of its Series E fundraising round, which pegged the value of the payments giant at $3 billion. The company’s valuation has tripled in the last six months, having become a unicorn or billion dollar company back in October last year.
In a statement on Monday, Razorpay said that it would use this capital to scale its business banking operations under RazorpayX and Razorpay Capital, acquire more Business-2-Business software companies and expand into international markets. It will also hire 600 new employees, it said. Investors who participated in the Series E round include Sequoia Capital, GIC the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, Ribbit Capital and Matrix Partners.
Razorpay aims on being a one-stop financial platform that any business needs in order to simplify and manage their end-to-end money movement, said Harshil Mathur, chief executive officer and co-founder of Razorpay. “We have made some strides towards that journey, our recent initiatives in the Banking and Lending space through RazorpayX & Capital have helped businesses solve for some very unique challenges around managing money, empowering businesses to grow upto 10X in spite of an economically difficult year,” he said.
Razorpay is the main payments provider for 5 million businesses including the likes of Facebook, Airtel, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred and ICICI Prudential among others. It aims to reach 200 million customers by 2021, it said.
“We expect digital payments to become a $500Bn+ market over the next 4-5 years. The Razorpay team, with their constant focus on executional excellence, has grabbed early leadership in this space. Their triad of payment, banking and lending products has made them the go-to for businesses looking for end-to-end online solutions, and positioned them as the central nervous system for India’s digital economy,” said Ishaan Mittal, principal, Sequoia India.
Razorpay X, the neo-banking platform, witnessed a 400% growth in transaction volumes in the last 12 months, the company said. Part of the capital raised as part of the Series E round will go towards building new tailored products, it said. The company has disbursed loans worth around around Rs 700 crore every month so far, and plans to scale this Rs 1,000 crore every month by the end of 2021.
While the company will continue to bet on the India opportunity, it says that similar financial issues exist in many South East Asian markets. Therefore, it will look at leveraging its technology and business experience to enter South East Asian markets. “The company has been working on market research, understanding the payment needs of SEA businesses and plans to hire on-ground teams in building a payment acceptance layer and work with multiple stakeholders on product customisation,” it said.
Shashank Kumar, co-founder and chief technology officer of Razorpay said they will look at acquiring more products and solutions that can fit well into their platform. “Razorpay will look to introduce more such products, through strategic partnerships and acquisitions which fit into our vision of making financial infrastructure easy and available to businesses across the country,” he said.
In 2019, the company acquired Opfin, a payroll and HR management company, and Thirdwatch, an Artificial Intelligence based fraud detection and prevention company. Both software solutions are integrated into Razorpay’s platform.
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