Payments Startup Airpay Secures $3.67 Mn Series A From Kalaari And Others

Omnichannel payments platform Airpay has secured $3.67 Mn (INR 24 Cr) in Series A round of funding from Kalaari Capital. Existing investors Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Rajesh Jhunjhunwala also participated in the round.

The company plans to infuse the freshly raised funds in technology development, building the sales and distribution team, and support infrastructure to rapidly expand its enterprise customer base.

Commenting on the development, Rajesh Raju, MD, Kalaari Capital said, “The sheer complexity of instruments and channels for payments in India demands innovative one-stop solutions such as those offered by Airpay. We are very excited to partner with them, as they are well positioned to capitalise on India’s reformed push towards a cashless economy.”

Founded in 2012 by Kunal Jhunjhunwala, Amit Kapoor and Rohan Deshpande, Airpay is an omnichannel payments company providing enterprise software as a service (SaaS) solution to its clients, to accept inbound payments from consumers (C2B) and process outbound payments to pay vendors (B2B).

“It is heartening to note that Airpay has scaled its throughout 14x over the last year. We welcome Kalaari Capital as a visionary investor who can add significant value to Airpay,” said Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.

The platform allows enterprises to accept payments from their clients across a plethora of touch points – web, mobile, call centre, IVR, email, SMS and face-to-face – via 100+ financial instruments.

The Mumbai-based company caters to companies in hospitality, education, banking, and retail verticals. It allows users to receive and send payment through credit and debit cards, online banking, and mobile wallets.

Earlier in 2015, Mumbai-based payment solutions company, Citrus Payment Solutions, had raised about $25 Mn (INR 162 Cr) from Sequoia Capital. In August 2016, PayPal launched PayPal.Me for enabling easy cross-borders transactions for SMBs and freelancers working with overseas clients. In November 2016, ToneTag, offline, proximity-based mobile payment solutions startup had announced a strategic fundraise.

Also, the Government of India’s increased push to promote digital transactions with demonetisation, UPI, BHIM, and GST have further made the payments space ripe for disruption. Therefore, to ensure payments are secured, in March 2017, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology released new guidelines drafted by  Information Technology (Security of Prepaid Payment Instruments) Rules 2017 for the security of prepaid payment instruments, under the Information Technology Act 2000.