BharatPe Raises $108 Mn In Series D Equity Round The company has raised a total of $233 million as equity till date
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Financial services company for merchants BharatPe on Thursday announced that it has raised $108 million in Series D equity round, at a valuation of $900 million.
The company further shared that it has raised $90 million in primary fundraise and also ensured secondary exit for its angel investors and employees for a total amount of $18 million.
The round was led by the company's existing investor Coatue Management. All seven existing institutional investors participated in the round: Coatue Management, Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Steadview Capital, Beenext and Amplo, and Sequoia Capital.
"We, at BharatPe, do not celebrate fundraises – it is akin to procuring raw material. We are super excited though to have returned INR 125 crore of capital to angels and all ESOP holders, earning them one of the highest return on investment. The team is committed to making money for all stakeholders – investors, lenders, borrowers, employees, and banks. With the balance sheet well capitalized (more than $200 million in the bank), we are now going to keep our heads down and deliver $30 billion TPV and build a loan book of $700 million with small merchants by March 2023," said Ashneer Grover, co-founder, and chief executive officer, BharatPe.
With this round, the company has raised a total of $268 million in equity and debt to date.
The Series D round got oversubscribed within the last two weeks of December 2020. In the Series D round, existing institutional investors of the company showed their intent to consolidate the cap table and hence, the company gave the opportunity to all angels and ESOP holders to liquidate.
In 2020, post-COVID, the company has also launched India's only ZERO MDR card acceptance terminals – BharatSwipe. Currently serving over 60 lakh merchants across 75 cities, the company has processed over 8 crore UPI transactions a month and annualized transaction processed value of $7 billion.
"2020 has been an unprecedented year for all. However, we at BharatPe have grown exponentially - our payments business has grown five-times and our lending business has grown tenfold in the last twelve months. This growth reiterates the trust that the small merchants and kirana store owners have showed in us. This is just the beginning of our journey and we are committed to build India's largest B2B financial services company that can serve as a one-stop destination for small merchants. For BharatPe, merchants will always be at the core of everything we build," Grover added.
The company facilitates over INR 200 crore of loans to its merchant partners every month through its NBFC partners. It has deployed more than 50,000 PoS machines and enables transactions of more than INR 900 crore/month on its PoS machines. Also, the company has been on an expansion spree and currently has a presence in 75 cities in the country.
Last month, the company announced that it had raised $35 million in debt from all three venture debt providers – Alteria Capital, InnoVen Capital, and Trifecta Capital - in the largest single raise. It raised INR 50 crore in debt from Trifecta Capital, INR 90 crore in debt from Alteria Capital, INR 60 crore from InnoVen Capital, and INR 49 crore from ICICI Bank.
