With An Eye On The BNPL Segment, Mosambee Acquires Fintech Startup Benow

Merchant solutions platform, Mosambee, has acquired BNPL-focused fintech startup, Benow, for an undisclosed amount.

As part of the deal, Benow CEO Soorraj VS will continue to head the team. Both startups will operate individually, but under the larger ambit of the Mosambee umbrella.

The deal will also help Benow leverage Mosambee’s existing ecosystem to enhance its product offering and focus on growth. The acquisition will also enable Mosambee to deepen its presence across the country via Benow’s network of partners.

With this deal, Benow aims to scale its business to drive 100X growth in the near future.

Benow was founded in 2016 by Sudhakar Ram. Benow is a network provider focused on the Buy Now-Pay Later (BNPL) model. The startup acts as an intermediary between consumer-facing brands and banking institutions, curating offers and schemes directly for the end customer. 

Benow also has partnerships with over 35 consumer-facing brands, 15 lenders and as many as 50,000 merchants across the country.

Commenting on the acquisition, Mosambee’s Director and cofounder, Sameer Chugh, said, “It is an immense pleasure to welcome Benow onboard with us. Their product syncs well into Mosambee’s vision of providing solutions to small retailers to help them compete with their larger and online counterparts. Our first focus was to make Benow profitable and we have been able to achieve this over the last 4 months.”

Mosambee was founded in 2013 by Alok Arora, Bhushan Thaker and Sameer Chugh. The startup began as a merchants payment platform offering mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) systems but later evolved into a merchants solutions startup. The startup aims to resolve multiple pain points in the merchant ecosystem with tech-based solutions. 

The fintech startup has over so far onboarded over 1 Mn SME merchants and provides solutions at many as a million merchant touchpoints. The startup also provides digital solutions like eChallan collection for many Central Government departments.

Mosambee has previously raised INR 15 Cr in investment from a host of investors including SIDBI, RVCF and has clocked cumulative revenues upwards of INR 400 Cr. The payments startup also saw a growth of 25% in FY 2020-21 and is targeting a 50% growth this financial year. 

It has a presence in India and 6 other countries across the globe including UAE and the Middle East. The startup is also gearing up for its Sri Lanka launch very soon. 

Speaking to Inc42, Mosambee cofounder Chugh said that the startup aims to scale up operations to add more solutions for the merchant ecosystem, which in turn will enable higher revenue for the startup.

The founder claimed that Benow saw a 60% increase in revenue in the last 4 months and posted its first profitable month in January this year.

He also said that the startup was not focused on valuation, but rather on building a profitable company, adding that Mosambee has internally created many new enterprises like subsidiary agent banking to explore new domains within the fintech segment.

On the future plans of the company, Chugh was quick to point out that the development of super apps could usher in a new era and that such an app for merchants could well be on its way. 

According to a report by Statista, the peer-to-merchant payments in India was estimated to reach INR 33 Tn by the financial year 2025. 

An Inc42 analysis also found that the BNPL market could grow 11X to $43.3 Bn by 2025

The overarching BNPL market is populated by a slew of standalone startups like ePayLater, Simpl, ZestMoney, among others.

The acquisition could help broaden the scope of Mosambee and will help Benow leverage a well-oiled ecosystem. This seems like a win-win for both and could well help Mosambee grow manifold.