India's Razorpay raises US$160m from investors including GIC

[MUMBAI] Razorpay, an Indian startup that facilitates digital payments, is raising US$160 million from Sequoia India, Singapore's sovereign fund GIC and others, tripling its valuation to US$3 billion in six months.The Bangalore-headquartered company, which helps businesses to automate their payment systems, will use the funds to expand into banking and lending, make acquisitions and add services in South-east Asia, the company said in an announcement on Monday. Razorpay Software Pvt, as the company is formally known, has raised a total of US$366.5 million so far.

India is in the middle of an unprecedented startup boom, as the coronavirus pandemic drives more activity online and investors see untapped opportunity for profit in the fledgling digital ecosystem. Earlier this month, six startups turned unicorns within the span of days, almost as many as all of 2020. Razorpay is the latest beneficiary, seeing its valuation surge after reaching the US$1 billion mark in October.

The startup has seen 300 per cent growth in both volume and revenues during the financial year ending in March, its co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Harshil Mathur said.

"We process about US$40 billion annualised payments volume currently, compared with US$12 billion a year ago," said Mr Mathur, discussing the funding via a Zoom video conference call. More than 5 million businesses use its payments infrastructure currently, compared with 3 million last year.

India's fintech segment has received a substantial boost after stringent lockdowns, night curfews and restrictions on the operation of malls and supermarkets. Consumers in the country of 1.3 billion people are spending more on e-commerce, internet learning, online gaming and wealth management services.

"Offline merchants are coming online at a rapid pace, and boutique stores and artisanal stores are opening up online, boosting digital payments," said Mr Mathur, whose service competes with startups like BillDesk and PayU.Razorpay was founded in Dec 2014 by Mathur, now 30, and his classmate Shashank Kumar, 31, from the country's premier engineering school, the Indian Institute of Technology's Roorkee campus. The two had gone on to work overseas for Microsoft Corp and Schlumberger before the idea of starting a payment gateway brought them back to India. Mr Mathur said the duo had beaten a path to at least a hundred bankers before getting a payment gateway license.

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