Razorpay on a mission to simplify online payments in India Razorpay, the second India-focused company to be selected by US-based startup accelerator Y Combinator program after Cleartax.
By Samiksha Jain •
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With an aim to simplify online payments in India, Razorpay kicked off as an online payment gateway solution that provides simple, affordable and secure way for small businesses, startups and other traditional SME organizations to acknowledge online payments. IIT-Roorkee alumni Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur turned this idea into reality before bringing it to fore. Razorpay is the second India-focused company to be selected by US-based startup accelerator Y Combinator after Cleartax.
The company founded that the existing US-based payment systems are not suitable for companies who wish to accept payments in India. Further they felt that enabling frictionless transactions is a major problem and nobody seems to be doing it right. Sensing the problem, the founders try to solve the problematic area by founding Razorpay in 2014.
Razorpay's effective and easy to integrate checkout form is what bridges the 2-tier problem at the end of developer and customer. The integration takes less than 20 minutes and the checkout form provides a simplified and easy experience to the customers.
"We believe that the online payments infrastructure in India has not developed at the same pace as the rest of the e-commerce and m-commerce eco-system," said Mathur.
The startup accepts and validates Internet payments via credit/debit cards, net banking and popular digital wallets from the end customers in real-time. It further provides a secure link amid merchant website, various issuing institutions, acquiring banks and other payment networks.
"We are building the next generation payments infrastructure which will accelerate the future e-commerce growth in India. Our patented technology will greatly help in achieving higher transaction success rates and faster checkout time especially on mobile devices while making payment gateway integration as easy as embedding a few lines of code," said Kumar.
Funding
Recently, startup has raised $9 million in series "A' funding led by Tiger Global along with Matrix Partners. The venture plans to deploy the funds for scaling up the product, building the right team and for strategic forays into the online payments industry. "The funds raised will help us accelerate the company's robust growth and future success," said Kumar.
Commenting on the investment, MD Matrix Partners India Vikram Vaidyanathan said, "Digital payments are a very large opportunity and it is still early days for the industry in India. Transaction success rates are still very low and it is still difficult for smaller merchants to accept online payments. We believe in Harshil and Shashank's vision of taking a technology first approach and are excited about partnering with them. We remain extremely positive on Fin-Tech in India and will take multiple bets in the space."
The company has so far raised $2.5 million in seed funding from number of investors and VC firms including Matrix Partners. It had raised $120,000 from Y Combinator in March this year. In May, Flipkart's chief product officer Punit Soni, made personal investment in the startup. The company claims to have a total of 33 angel investors including Founders of Snapdeal, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansalp; Inmobi Founders Abhay Singhal, Amit Gupta and Naveen Tewari; Freecharge Founders Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon; Bill Gajda, SVP, global head of Innovation, Visa; Jeff Huber, SVP, GoogleX; Ram Shriram, a board member and an early investor in Google; Y Combinator partner and Twitch founder Justin Kan.
The platform is highly recommended due to its superfast online on boarding of merchants, easy and hassle free integration and powerful Android and iOS SDKs for mobile payments. With support for international payments, more than 50 banks, popular digital wallets and a 24x7 support team, Razorpay is becoming the de facto choice for payments.
The startup claims to have a customer base of more than 1,800 companies including RoadRunnr, Lookup, Gozefo, Innerchef, Teen Patti Gold, LocalOye, UrbanPiper, Instafeez, Neostencil, Chai Point and Sattviko.
In just 1 year, Razorpay has made great progress and has made life easier for small businesses and startups as far as accepting payments are concerned.
