BharatPe Raises $15.5 Mn In Series A Round From Sequoia, Insight Partners

Fintech startup BharatPe has raised $15.5 Mn in Series A funding from Insight Partners, Sequoia, and Beenext. The Delhi-based company said it will use the funds to scale their operations.

Commenting on the funding, cofounder of BharatPe Ashneer Grover, said, “The funding will fuel our mission of democratizing digital payments for merchants, and make UPI a preferred way to pay.”

BharatPe is a merchant focused payments platform. It 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 platform also enables merchants to track their transactions and settlements, manage sales record and also earn periodic cashbacks.

The fintech startup was cofounded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani in 2018. The company currently operates in 11 Indian cities including Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Indore, Bhopal, Nagpur, Chandigarh, and Jaipur.

“BharatPe facilitates 10% of overall UPI merchant transactions in the country and accounts for 1% of overall UPI,” Ashneer added.

UPI Transactions Market Overview

According to the latest data released by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has recorded 799.54 Mn transactions in March 2019.

This is an 18.5% jump from February when it had recorded 674.19 Mn transactions. The worth of the total transactions made in March 2019 was INR 1.33 Lakh Cr, which is 25% higher than INR 1.06 Lakh Cr transaction worth in February 2019.

According to a Credit Suisse report, the Indian digital payment sector is expected to grow five-fold and reach $1 Tn by 2023. While several fintech players are looking to tap into this growing segment, Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay have been dominating the UPI transactions market.

As of January, it was reported that Paytm had recorded 221 Mn transactions while PhonePe and Google Pay clocked nearly 220 Mn transactions each.

Interestingly in the latest reports, Google Pay has emerged as the leading Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform in terms of total transactions value exceeding by a margin of about 25%. However, February’s market leader Paytm is still leading in terms of UPI transaction volumes, closely followed by PhonePe and Google Pay.