Fintech Unicorn Razorpay Receives Strategic Investment From CRM Giant Salesforce

Fintech unicorn Razorpay has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from customer relations management (CRM) giant Salesforce’s venture capital arm Salesforce Ventures. The startup said that the fresh investment, along with the partnership with Salesforce, would help Razorpay to strengthen its foothold in the business banking space. The Bengaluru-based startup said that with the fresh capital, it would drive adoption and financial growth for underserved small businesses in the next one year.

The new capital infusion comes months after Razorpay closed its Series E round worth $160 Mn in the month of April this year. The investment round was led by Sequoia Capital and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC. Back then, Ribbit Capital and Matrix Partners too participated in the round, almost tripling the valuation of the startup to $3 Bn. 

Founded by Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur in 2014 as a payment gateway service, the startup claims to provide technology solutions to 8 Mn businesses across the country. The startup’s core business continues to  be its online payment gateway, which contributes to more than 70% of its revenue. The startup boasts of serving marquee clients such as Facebook, BookMyShow, Airtel, Ola, Swiggy, Zomato, Tata Technologies, and CRED, among others. The fintech unicorn claims its services will reach 200 Mn customers by the end of the year from the existing 140 Mn.  

Razorpay, excluding the latest investment, has raised a total of $366.5 Mn in five rounds of funding from Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners, Y Combinator, MasterCard, Sequoia Capital along with 33 investors to date.  

Razorpay claims to have witnessed a 40-45% growth, month-on-month. The startup has achieved $50 Bn total payment value.  Its business-banking platform, RazorpayX which it launched in November of 2020 along with Visa, has seen over 400% growth in transaction volume during 16 months of pandemic and is currently serving over 15,000 Indian businesses. 

Digital payments in India has seen a significant growth in the backdrop of the pandemic. The fear of contracting the virus through fiat currency and hassle-free online transactions has doubled down the adoption rate of digital payments among Indians. As per the reserve bank of India (RBI), digital payments in the country have grown 30.19% during FY21.  As per a recent report by ACI worldwide, India retained the top spot in terms of digital transactions with 25.5 Bn real-time payments transactions, followed by China.

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