India payments player Innoviti expands Series D to $22m
India-based financial technology start-up Innoviti Payment Solutions has doubled the size of its ongoing Series D round to more than INR 1.6bn (USD 22.5m). The overall target is USD 3bn.
Alumni Ventures, a VC firm that manages capital for graduates of leading US universities, came into the latest close. There were two earlier closes, according to AVCJ Research: INR 800m in January from Bessemer Venture Partners, Patni Wealth, and Trifecta Capital; and INR 750m in May from Netherlands development finance institution (DFI) FMO.
Innoviti offers a collaborative commerce platform that helps merchants, banks, and brands reduce costs by acquiring customers collectively. This is achieved through purchasing tools, delivered at the point of sale, that encourage repeat purchases. Innoviti wants to bring buy now, pay later (BNPL) and instalment payment programs to smaller businesses, levelling the competitive playing field.
The company claims to support three-quarters of India’s offline purchases that are transacted digitally in enterprise retail across the food, fashion, electronics, and healthcare categories. It serves more than 25,000 stores in 2,000 cities, processing transactions worth over USD 10bn per year.
Innoviti initially focused on large-scale customers but has pushed down into the lower tiers. It estimates that digital purchases worth more than USD 110bn happen in the middle market alone. Genie, a product aimed at mid-market electronics merchants, launched in July 2021 and was driving INR 10bn in gross transaction value within six months.
Similar products are being rolled out in jewellery and other categories, while an instalment payment platform is being developed in tandem with Visa.
The new capital will support business expansion, marketing, technology upgrades, and acquisitions, especially in data science and marketing technology. Innoviti already claims to be profitable with gross margins in excess of 60%.
“Innoviti brings a deep technical background and understanding of their market to retail point of sale. We were especially impressed with the unique technology and solutions they developed to deliver value directly at the point of purchase to the consumers, retailers, banks and brands,” Tom Meyer, a managing partner at Alumni Ventures, said in a statement.
“We are not seeing anyone else doing this at the scale that Innoviti is, and this scale helps give them an advantage that is hard to beat.”
Tata Capital led a seed round of USD 1.6m for the company in 2014, according to AVCJ Research. Five more investments, totalling more than USD 40m, closed over the next six years featuring Catamaran Ventures, Bessemer, SBI Ven Capital, Trifecta, and FMO.
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