Razorpay Partners Peak XV, Lightspeed To Invest In Early Stage Startups

Payments giant Razorpay has partnered VC firms Peak XV Partners and Lightspeed to launch a venture investment programme targeting early stage B2B startups across sectors like fintech, ecommerce, retail, healthcare, logistics, among others.

The Bengaluru-based fintech unicorn, under the ‘Razorpay Venture Investment Program’, aims to invest up to $1 Mn in 10-15 pre-seed to Series A startups every year.

“Building a startup, particularly in the B2B space, is a daunting challenge. Having experienced it first hand and witnessing founders across industries face this daily, we believe the support system must go beyond just capital,” Harshil Mathur, cofounder and CEO of Razorpay, said.

Peak XV Partners and Lightspeed will be equal investment partners in the programme, Mathur told Inc42, adding that they would be co-investing with Razorpay in the selected startups. 

The programme will be spearheaded by Vishnu Acharya, head of strategy and corporate development at Razorpay.

Besides funding, the selected startups will get access to Razorpay’s API stack, sandbox environments, and integration support with the company’s tech infrastructure. The programme also includes one-on-one mentorship from Razorpay’s leadership team and access to its Rize community of more than 3,000 founders.

Founded in 2014 by Shashank Kumar and Mathur, Razorpay has evolved from a payments platform to an omnichannel payments and banking platform. It has raised a total funding of over $740 Mn from investors like GIC, Tiger Global, and Lightspeed Ventures. 

Razorpay reported a 365% jump in profit to INR 33.5 Cr in FY24 from INR 7.2 Cr in the previous year. Operating revenue rose 9% year-on-year to INR 2,475 Cr, with 83% coming from payment aggregation services.

Razorpay has previously backed startups like Shiprocket, HostBooks, Inai, and GetVantage. 

The announcement of the investment programme comes at a time when the Indian startup ecosystem is showing signs of funding revival. 

Amid the rising number of startups in the country, a number of corporates and successful entrepreneurs have been backing Indian founders. 

Last year, Panasonic partnered with 100X.VC  to launch Panasonic Ignition, targeting energy management startups with an initial corpus of $55 Mn. Similarly, Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath’s WTFund, in partnership with UnboxingBLR, recently launched a city-focused challenge to back Bengaluru-based innovators.