Indian merchant-focused payment app BharatPe raises $8.2m in debt funding

BharatPe, an India-based payments platform, raised 600 million rupee (US$8.2 million) in funding from venture debt firm InnoVen Capital.

The startup plans to raise US$500 million to US$700 million in debt capital over the next two years, said Suhail Sameer, group president at BharatPe.

BharatPe team / Source: BharatPe

The fintech firm also plans to raise US$150 million to US$200 million in equity funding, with an aim to raise the first tranche of about US$100 million by March, reported LiveMint.

Founded in 2018, BharatPe offers merchants a single interface for all existing unified payments interface (UPI) payment transactions through apps such as Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay, BHIM, MobiKwik, Freecharge, TrueCaller, among others. Through the use of the BharatPe QR code, merchants can accept payments for free, and the service also gives them access to credit.

The latest funding comes after the fintech firm recorded US$479 million in total transaction value, processing 61.5 million UPI transactions in November last year. BharatPe claimed it had toppled Google Pay to become the third-largest player in the merchant UPI payment acceptance space.

It further claimed that during the same month, BharatPe had a 5% market share in terms of transaction value and 7% market share in terms of transaction volume.

The company intends to grow its business by 5x in the next two years to cross US$30 billion in total payment value (TPV) from an annualized TPV of US$7 billion as of November 2020.

“We are bullish on lending and aim to disburse loans of US$1 billion to small merchants and kiranas (local stores) by 2023,” said Sameer.

On average, BharatPe disburses nearly 1 billion rupee (US$13.6 million) worth of loans every month, as per the LiveMint report.

Competition in the merchant payment space has intensified in India in the past few years, with players such as Ant Group-backed Paytm, Flipkart’s PhonePe, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay vying for a piece of the pie.

Currency converted from Indian rupee to US dollar: US$1 = 73.27 rupee.