Indian BNPL outfit ZestMoney is out of cash after failing to secure a sale.
Established in 2015, ZestMoney garnered nearly $140m from multiple investors, such as PayU, Zip, Ribbit Capital, Xiaomi, and Goldman Sachs. The Bangalore-based startup’s valuation reached $450m in its last funding round.
In 2019, ZestMoney bought NBFC Nahar Credits for INR170m. The acquired entity was previously owned by British payday loan provider Wonga Group.
As recently as last November, Indian digital payments firm PhonePe was in talks to buy ZestMoney in a bid to enter the digital lending sector. At that time, ZestMoney had been searching for a buyer for approximately six months amid attempts to raise investments.
Since the talks failed, ZestMoney has been trying to secure alternative financial backing. PhonePe pulled out of the deal over due diligence concerns.
BizPay, the latest Australian BNPL outfit to fold, also ran out of cash and failed to attract fresh investment.
As with all of the other BNPL failures this year, BizPay and ZestMoney reported massive demand for its services. They deployed all of the usual BNPL vocabulary of buzzwords. It was seamless and it was innovative.
The past year has been a financial disaster for the standalone BNPL outfits. Affirm has exited The Australian market.
IOUpay failed, Latitude Financial Services exited BNPL, Openpay failed, Payright, Splitit and Zebit delisted, Sezzle’s share price is down by 85% YTD while Zip’s struggles have been well documented.
