BharatPe Bags $12 Mn From Alteria, Looks To Raise $700 Mn Debt By 2022

Delhi-based merchant focused payments platform BharatPe has raised INR 90 Cr ($12 Mn) in venture debt from Alteria Capital, with the intention to raise INR 250 Cr ($34 Mn) of debt in this round. Last week, the company had raised INR 60 Cr ($8.2 Mn) in debt from InnoVen Capital.

The company intends to raise $700 Mn of debt capital over the next two years to help small merchants meet their credit needs and scale accordingly, BharatPe group president Suhail Sameer has said in a press note. The fintech startup, which enables merchants to access credit and other value-added financial services, claims to have facilitated disbursement of over INR 800 Cr till date to merchants listed on the platforms.

BharatPe was founded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani in 2018. It has raised $142.5 Mn till date from marquee investors like BEEnext, Sequoia, SteadView Capital, Ribbit Capital, Coatue Management LLC, Insight Partners, and Amplo. It had raised $75 Mn last February as a part of its Series C round for expansion.

Through a mobile app offers merchants a single interface for all existing UPI apps such as Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay, BHIM, Mobikwik, Freecharge, TrueCaller among 100 other UPI transaction applications. The company also launched a point-of-sales (PoS) business, which it claims has grown to $2 Bn annualised transaction value in just three months post launch.

In November last year, the company claimed to have surpassed Google Pay to become the third-largest player in the merchant UPI payments, with 6.15 Cr UPI transactions worth INR 3,334 Cr ($479 Mn). BharatPe also claimed to have reached an all-time high of 5% market share by transaction and 7% market share by transaction value.

It further added that the volume of transactions processed by BharatPe last month was greater than the combined UPI P2M (person-to-merchants) transaction volume of Jio, Zomato, Swiggy, CRED, Flipkart, CashFree, IRCTC and MPL. It serves over 50 Lakh merchants across more than 50 cities. It plans to scale up to 65 cities by March 2021.

Grover claims that the company has grown 4x through the pandemic, and is now looking at a 5x growth of its business over the next two years to cross $30 Bn total payments volume (TPV). Sameer previously said, “We are bullish on lending and aim to disburse loans of $1 Bn to small merchants and kiranas by 2023.”

“BharatPe has shown sharp growth and we believe the ability to leverage their extensive small merchant network to funnel credit is going to play out well in this decade.” said Vinod Murali, Managing Partner, Alteria Capital.