Razorpay Raises $160 Mn In Series E Round; Valuation Triples To $3 Bn In 6 Months The startup aims to scale up business banking operations, acquire B2B SaaS companies, and expand the business into international markets

After becoming a Unicorn a few months ago in October 2020, Bengaluru-based payments and business banking platform, Razorpay, on Monday, announced its Series E fundraise of $160 million.

This financing round has tripled the company's valuation to $3 billion in less than six months, signaling one of the fastest increases in valuation for an Indian Unicorn.

This round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, along with participation from Ribbit Capital and Matrix Partners.

Razorpay plans to infuse the freshly raised capital to scale up its business banking suite, invest in new acquisitions and launch in international markets such as South-East Asian countries.

The Fintech Unicorn is already hiring more than 600 employees to fuel its growth plans.

"We at Razorpay want to be the one-stop financial platform that a business needs to simplify and manage their end-to-end money movement. We have made some strides towards that journey, our recent initiatives in the Banking and Lending space through RazorpayX and capital have helped businesses solve some very unique challenges around managing money, empowering businesses to grow up to tenfold in spite of an economically difficult year. But there's more work to be done, we believe there's a dire need to develop new banking technologies that meet the rising demand. And so we plan to use these funds to further expand our banking and lending product suite so that we not only provide a better experience to businesses and their customers but significantly contribute to the growth of our partner businesses," said Harshil Mathur, chief executive officer, and co-founder, Razorpay.

Razorpay helps small businesses and large enterprises modernize their financial infrastructure by providing intelligent automated payment and business banking solutions to manage their money flow end-to-end so that it frees up entrepreneurs, heads of business, technology, and finance functions, and enables them to concentrate on cultivating their niche, no matter how small or big. The new funding gives the platform a total of $366.5 million in investments since its inception in 2014 that includes its recent raise, a $100 million in Series D in 2020.

"We are delighted about reaching a significant milestone today, we couldn't be more proud of what the team at Razorpay has achieved. We are geared up to make an impactful contribution to the industry and aid adoption in underserved markets. We're really happy to have continued faith and encouragement from GIC, Sequoia Capital India, and our other investors and we believe this investment will build a cutting-edge payment and banking ecosystem for India and the world and new thinking for the industry to follow," Mathur added.

"Being a technology-first company, we're always evaluating products and technologies that automate long and arduous money movement, accounting, and other banking processes, thereby allowing businesses to focus more on their growth. In the next twelve months, Razorpay will look to introduce more such products, through strategic partnerships and acquisitions which fit into our vision of making financial infrastructure easy and available to businesses across the country," shared Shashank Kumar, co-founder, and chief technology officer, Razorpay.

In 2021, Razorpay plans to double down investment in acquiring B2B SaaS companies that can help scale up operations while providing the highest standards of customer experience in the country.

"We are delighted to strengthen our partnership with Razorpay, which has demonstrated strong growth momentum while continuing to innovate across its core payments, banking, and lending solutions. As a long-term investor, GIC looks forward to supporting Harshil and Shashank for the company's next phase of growth," remarked Choo Yong Cheen, chief investment officer for private equity, GIC.

In the last six months, Razorpay has witnessed a 40-45 per cent growth, month-on-month. Currently, the company has achieved $40 billion TPV and aims to further solidify its position as one of the largest full-stack fintech companies in the country.

"We expect digital payments to become a $500 billion market over the next 4-5 years. The Razorpay team, with their constant focus on executional excellence, has grabbed early leadership in this space. Their triad of payment, banking, and lending products has made them the go-to for businesses looking for end-to-end online solutions and positioned them as the central nervous system for India's digital economy. Sequoia Capital India is privileged to be partners in this journey and excited to deepen the relationship through this new round of funding," commented Ishaan Mittal, principal, Sequoia India.

Razorpay currently powers payments for over five million businesses including the likes of Facebook, Airtel, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred, ICICI Prudential among others, and is all set to reach 200 million customers by 2021.