Inc42 Daily Brief
Stay Ahead With Daily News & Analysis on India’s Tech & Startup Economy
Delhi-based digital payments and financial services company InstantPay has raised Pre-Series A funding from Singapore-based investors RB Investments and Kaleden Holdings. According to a company statement, the amount is about $3 Mn-$5 Mn (INR 20 Cr-INR 34 Cr).
The startup will use the funding to further enhance its technology platform, broaden its portfolio of consumer service offerings and aggressively expand its market presence in neighbourhood stores across India.
InstantPay is a business unit of SMSdaak India Limited. Incorporated in 2010, SMSdaak is a fast-growing provider of electronic payment and transaction processing systems to service providers, financial institutions, distributors, retailers and individuals.
Founded in 2012 by Shailendra Agarwal, Mohammad Rehan, and Sankalp Shangari, InstantPay is a digital payments platform which is aggregating a host of services and distributing them to consumers through a network of local stores and vendors present across India. InstantPay provides access to day-to-day mobile & data card recharge, DTH recharges, and utility bill payments, travel bookings, etc.
The statement also claimed that the company currently has over 60,000 micro merchants using its services nationwide. With alliances with major utilities, financial and travel service providers it claims to witness over 10 Mn transactions per month.
Shailendra Agarwal, CEO InstantPay said, “InstantPay offers multiple services under one digital platform and the micro merchants love this about the company. They also get to bypass agents & distributors thereby increasing their margins and avoiding hassles of dealing with multiple vendors. While we build this massive network, we are also enabling other products and services to be delivered via this distribution – directly and efficiently.”
Earlier in April 2016, Mumbai-based digital payments company, Transerv, raised $15 Mn in Series C funding led by IDFC SPICE Fund, a domestic venture capital fund managed by IDFC Asset Management Company and Micromax Informatics. Other players in this segment include Paytm, Mobikwik, Freecharge, etc.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.