Indian digital payments firm BharatPe has secured $75m in the Series C funding round raising its valuation to $425m.
The round was led by Coatue Management and fintech investor Ribbit Capital. The company’s existing backers Insight Partners and Steadview Capital and new investor Amplo also joined the round.
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Overall, the digital payments firm has raised a total of $143m through all investment rounds. In August last year, BharatPe secured a $50m investment.
According to an Economic Times report, the new proceeds will be used to support its NBFC unit Resilient Capital. The unit, which currently awaits central bank approval, will offer credit to small merchants.
BharatPe co-founder and CEO Ashneer Grover was quoted by the publication as saying: “We have already disbursed Rs 100 crore [INR1bn] of term loans to merchants through partner NBFCs and are ready to extend lines of credit to our merchants, for which we need our own NBFC to innovate.
“We applied for the licence in August last year and we’re hoping we’ll get the license from the RBI by March.”
The funding will also be used to scale up its business by investing in new products and technology.
Coatue Management managing director Rahul Kishore told the publication: “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.”
Currently, BharatPe serves around three million merchants across 30 cities. It aims to increase the figure to eight million by the end of March next year.
