How BharatPe Went From INR 5,000 Cr Loss To Break-Even

Three years after the Ashneer Grover controversy broke out and dragged BharatPe

into months of turmoil, the fintech giant has made a comeback of sorts. And while we still await the results for FY25, as we saw this week, the company has bounced back from losses to a break-even point. 

Specifically, it has reached this position after the first nine months of the fiscal year from a net loss of INR 492 Cr FY24. How did the company get there, especially when other fintech companies with higher revenue are striving to reach this mark? 

That’s what we spoke to BharatPe and fintech analysts about, but before we find out, a look at the other top stories from our newsroom this past week: 

• BluSmart’s Stalled Drive: When ICRA downgraded Gensol Engineering, it didn’t just trigger a stock market free fall but also made BluSmart suffer collateral damage, and that’s how BluSmart’s closest ally became its biggest risk  
• Paytm’s Super App Crumbling: Paytm was early in the super app race in India, but the past year has led to Paytm shedding parts of its once-mighty super app empire
• PlanetSpark’s AI Turn: From India’s edtech wasteland emerges another ray of hope in the form of PlanetSpark, which has shown that leveraging machine learning and AI can actually turn into profitability

BharatPe In The Break-Even Zone

When Suhail Sameer stepped down as BharatPe CEO in January 2023, the company was in dire state. The leadership layer had been decimated after a year of controversies and its on-paper losses had spiralled to INR 5,000 in FY22. 

Like much of the fintech industry and analysts at the time, we wondered if there was some life left in BharatPe. Since then the company has worked in silent mode amid all the noises around the fintech ecosystem to bounce back, and it would not be an understatement to say that this is a major feat. 

According to a BharatPe spokesperson, FY25 is the best year for the company thus far in terms of revenue and profitability. The turnaround began in early 2024.

“We became EBITDA positive for the first time in October 2024 or beginning of Q3 FY25, marking a significant turning point in our journey. In the first nine months of FY25, we not only reduced our losses substantially but also achieved consistent EBITDA profitability. Our revenue has already reached INR 1,787.8 Cr, surpassing the INR 1,534.4 Cr recorded for the entire FY24,” the company told Inc42. 

The spokesperson added that the company is on track to close FY25 as a fully EBITDA-positive business. A significant change in the past year has been the shift in focus from payments to lending and beyond, as we will see. The acquisition of an NBFC licence can be seen as a key piece in the puzzle, and added to BharatPe’s already strong fintech backend, which includes a joint venture which owns a small finance banking licence.

This twin engine gave the company a significant edge over some of the other players in the field.

From a narrative of governance lapses, financial misappropriation and leadership spats, BharatPe has levelled up its game and turned into a business that’s managing multiple RBI-regulated entities. 

A large part of this has come due to the change in leadership. After Sameer’s exit, Nalin Negi took over as interim CEO and was confirmed soon after. Unlike Sameer or any of BharatPe’s former CEOs, Negi came from a regulated financial services background having held leadership positions at SBI Cards and GE Capital. This has undoubtedly been a factor in turning the narrative and operations, particularly around compliance.

However, in terms of scale the Delhi NCR-based unicorn is still far behind competitors like listed giant Paytm and IPO-bound PhonePe. What’s BharatPe doing to catch up here? We take an inside look 

The Double Punch: NBFC And Banking Licence

Talk to any fintech founder, investor or analyst today in India, acquiring an NBFC license or a banking license is a dream come true for a fintech company in India. We saw the fate of Paytm after the RBI action on Paytm Payments Bank. It decimated the company’s profitability in one quarter and had it chasing for other banking partners to keep its payments business going. 

For BharatPe, the acquisition of a 49% stake in Unity Small Finance Bank in 2021, was a big deal. It paved the way for strengthening its core merchants business. In 2023, BharatPe went on to acquire a 51% stake in Trillion Loans, an NBFC which already had a large portfolio of secured and unsecured loans disbursed to small and medium businesses. 

Did this shore up BharatPe’s fortunes? Well, it looks like it.

“BharatPe stands apart as the only fintech company in India with stakes in both an NBFC and a small finance bank. This unique positioning enables us to offer a comprehensive suite of financial services, spanning payments, lending, and investments, seamlessly integrated to serve both merchants and consumers. Unlike pure UPI-driven platforms, we are building a financial ecosystem with real depth, adaptability, and long-term sustainability,” the spokesperson added.

While acquiring lending partners and providing minimum guarantees to the banks NBFCs has been a massive challenge for fintech platforms, BharatPe’s SFB-NBFC double punch was enough to break this knot.

If reports are to be believed, BharatPe is looking to completely acquire Trillion Loans over the next four years, and currently owns around 63% of Trillion. The NBFC reported a profit of INR 29.6 Cr in the first three-quarters of FY25, according to India Ratings and Research. 

The company spokesperson reiterated that merchants business — lending, subscription, PoS devices, credit on UPI — now contributes to 90% of its overall revenue, and that the platform has a registered merchants base of 18 Mn. 

While this may seem comparatively small compared to Paytm or PhonePe, those two have been built primarily around UPI, and branched out to merchant services after consumer payments. BharatPe, on the other hand, has taken the other route and gone B2B first. The company has told us in the past that this is its biggest moat. 

“We’re not caught up in the vanity metrics race—we’re more about creating products that actually mean something to our merchants and consumers. It’s worked for us in building a solid, profitable merchant business. Our merchant business is still the heart of BharatPe. It brings in over 90% of our revenue, through things like merchant loans, soundboxes, and PoS terminals,and offering cross-selling options like credit cards on UPI,” the BharatPe spokesperson emphasised.

Now Comes The B2C Play 

While merchants business has been the core revenue driver for BharatPe all these years, consumer payments is the next focus. While BharatPe is not a major UPI player, the hot topic of MDR on UPI has brought the focus back on the competition. And it also compels players like BharatPe to strengthen consumer payments besides merchants.

Building on top of UPI like the industry peers, BharatPe is now offering features such as bill payments, credit card bill payments, third-party ecommerce coupons and its own loyalty and rewards programme, besides investments and loans.

In October last year, BharatPe rolled out a separate wealthtech app, which offers P2P lending, gold loans, fixed deposits and more. 

In response to our queries, BharatPe said that while it will always be a merchants-first business, the company’s expansion into the B2C segment is a crucial pillar of its growth strategy. “We officially launched our consumer-facing business in 2024, and it’s already gaining strong traction. Key offerings like our co-branded credit card and UPI-based credit line are designed to bridge the credit gap for India’s digital-first consumers.” 

The company claims that even when it scales up these offerings and other new products, the focus will remain on sustainable growth by driving engagement across these features and verticals. 

IPO On The Horizon 

BharatPe has also set its sight on an IPO in the coming 10-12 months after achieving full year EBITDA profitability.

Bengaluru-based PhonePe has laid out its IPO blueprint and turned profitable (minus ESOP costs) and received capital infusion from Walmart consistently over the past couple of years. Paytm’s profitability target will also be put to test soon as results for Q4 FY25 come in after a year of cost restructuring. 

All of this is to say that BharatPe may not be the only profitable player at the end of this year. We haven’t even covered the likes of CRED which are also amping up their revenue game. It’s a tight race in the fintech world, and UPI payments, which acted as a lever for topline growth, is only going to become more lucrative, if and when it comes in. 

BharatPe’s biggest advantage will once again be its twin engines. With Trillion Loans already under its kitty, BharatPe has an added advantage of growing its SME loan portfolio and reducing the growth burden on the payments business to some extent.

For PhonePe and even Paytm, the focus is on the loan distribution model and drawing commissions from lending partners whereas for BharatPe, nearly 30% of loans being underwritten comes from its own NBFC. 

That being said, the huge merchant base for PhonePe and Paytm — 40 Mn and 43 Mn, respectively — cannot be ignored. BharatPe has to catch up with fintech super apps in a meaningful way and cannot be circumspect. 

Having put its tainted past behind it, BharatPe has also adapted to new regulations, corporate governance and fiscal discipline for this next phase.

“A key driver of our turnaround has been our commitment to disciplined execution and corporate governance. We have transitioned into a professionally managed organisation that not only meets but stays ahead of regulatory standards. Transparency, accountability, and financial prudence are at the core of our strategy, and this approach has been instrumental in accelerating our path to profitability,” the company spokesperson said.

That’s speaking with the finesse and cadence of a bank and not like a fintech company. This is not the BharatPe we used to know.

Sunday Roundup: Startup Funding, Deals & More

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• BYJU’S Saga Continues To Unfold: During an NCLT hearing, the counsel of the edtech startup’s founders accused the former IRP Pankaj Srivastava of delaying the submission of BCCI’s settlement with the company
• X Drags Govt To Court Again: The Elon Musk-led social media platform has filed a petition before the Karnataka High Court to challenge the use of Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act to block content
• BYD’s Billions For India: Amid India’s EV manufacturing push, Chinese auto giant BYD is reportedly planning to set up an EV production unit near Hyderabad with an investment of $10 Bn

[Edited By Nikhil Subramaniam]

Correction note: April 1, 11:30 AM

• An earlier version of this story erroneously mentioned that Suhail Sameer was removed from BharatPe. We have rectified this error.