Cashfree Bags $35 Mn In Series B Round Led By Apis Partners, Plans To Muscle Up R&D

Bengaluru-based payment gateway platform Cashfree has raised $35.3 Mn in a new financing round. The startup’s Series B was led by London-headquartered private equity firm Apis Partners, with participation from existing investors Y Combinator and Smilegate Investments. 

With the latest fundraise the startup’s mop up to date stands at $42 Mn.

Launched in 2015 by Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta, Cashfree offers a number of services to ease out payments processes for digital platforms. Currently, it offers more than a dozen products and services and helps over 55,000 businesses disburse salary to employees, accept payments online, set up recurring payments and settle marketplace commissions.

Some of Cashfree’s customers include fintech startup Cred, online grocer BigBasket, food delivery platform Zomato, insurers HDFC Ergo and Acko and travel ticketing service provider Ixigo.

Commenting on the fundraise Udayan Goyal, co-founder and a managing partner at Apis said, “Cashfree has maintained a leadership position in this space and is now going through a period of rapid growth fuelled by the development of unique and innovative products that serve the needs of its customers.”  

Cashfree claims to have processed over $12 Bn in payments volumes in the financial year that ended in March. Sinha said part of the fresh fund will be deployed in R&D so that Cashfree can scale its technology stack and build more services, including those that can digitize more offline payments for its clients.

Commenting on the capital raise, Akash Sinha, CEO and cofounder of Cashfree said, “We are delighted to have Apis as an investor and partner in our journey and value their extensive experience investing in high growth digital payments companies, like Cashfree, across several geographies globally. This investment is an endorsement of Cashfree’s platform as well as our vision to empower customers and businesses with the latest payments tools.”

Speaking to Inc42 earlier, Datta had said, “Refunds being slow is one of the major causes of bad customer experience for an online business. Around 50% of the support time is spent in resolving complaints regarding refund delays for a merchant and for us as a payment gateway.” 

After raising $5.5 Mn (INR 38.2 Cr) in its Series A round of funding in April 2019, the company recently launched a first-of-its-kind solution ‘instant refunds’ for online payments for ecommerce and other online services such as food delivery.