India’s BharatPe raises $75m Series C

According to The Economic Times, Ribbit Capital, Amplo, and Coatue Management committed capital to the round. Steadview Capital and Insight Partners were among the other participants. Previously, BharatPe received $50 million in Series B funding co-led by US-based Ribbit Capital and Steadview. Other investors in the start-up also include Sequoia Capital India and Beenext Capital.

Founded in 2018, BharatPe provides merchants with a QR code system compatible with any payment app using the government’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) infrastructure. UPI is a mobile platform launched in 2016 to facilitate inter-bank transactions. Payments conducted via UPI are free. BharatPe says three million merchants use its services across 30 cities. It wants to onboard three million more users in the next year.

The majority of the new funding will support Resilient Capital, an associated NBFC that is awaiting regulatory approval to begin operations. Currently, BharatPe is partnering with other NBFCs to issue loans in a bid to increase digital payments penetration among offline retailers.  

“India is one of the largest internet markets in the world, but many of the country’s merchants are still offline. BharatPe has developed a dynamic financial technology platform that brings small businesses throughout India into the digital age,” said Rahul Kishore, a managing director at Coatue.

Other mobile payments providers in India include Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay, BHIM and RazorPay. According to a Reserve Bank of India circular issued this week, digital payments conducted using the UPI gateway became the country's most popular payment method for the first time last year.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Financials
• Expansion
• India
• Coatue Management
• NBFCs